Note for readers: I have figured out how to do line breaks. Things are better now. I'm sorry for the mess in the past!

"May I join you, captain?"

Kathryn Janeway, the esteemed and beleaguered of late captain of the Federation Starship Voyager, looked up from her tray of unidentifiable mixed greens into a pair of twinkling blue eyes. She repressed a sigh of resignation and gestured wanly with a fork towards the chair opposite hers. Apparently, her quiet lunch was to be interrupted for the fourth day straight, though she had only herself to blame. She could peacefully luncheon in her ready room if she spent her replicator rations on something other than an endless torrent of black coffee. It was enough of a necessity that she had considered adding it to the relatively boring perks of being the captain of the ship.

Oblivious to the captain's ambivalence at her presence, the young woman slid her tray into place and sat primly on the chair. She rested her elbows on the table, plopped her chin on her folded fingers, and gazed expectantly at her superior officer.

"Ensign...Powell," said Janeway, briefly fumbling for the name. "What is our topic for today?"

A pleased smile spread across the girl's freckled face and Janeway felt a twinge of shame. Among the younger crew, even those in the Maquis, a favoring glance from the captain was something that brought pride. Having a name remembered was steps away from a commendation.

Be kind, Kathryn, she chided herself. They're all looking to you. Always. Even during yet another atrocious meal.

"I believe we left off at the historical dynamics between the Kazon and the Trabe in the early part of the 2300's, starting with the massacre at the Karlin mines."

Janeway tried to look thoughtful, masking her inability to recall even the barest details of their previous conversations. The young woman finally perceived the deception and quickly tried to compensate to help Janeway save face.

"Or we can discuss, er-" she began flusteredly. A hint of panic crept across her face and she ran a hand through her short chestnut hair nervously.

"Don't worry, Ensign," Janeway said with a self-deprecating grin. "Why not bring me up to speed?"

The girl's happy expression reappeared, though it seemed strained, and she began explaining one of the triggering events of the Kazon rebellions. How many times, Janeway wondered, had she asked this poor crewman to repeat this very story? Certainly often enough that perhaps the Ensign was humoring her rather than the other way around.

A few forkfuls of salad later, the conversation was caught up enough that Janeway felt she could contribute, at least superficially. But before she could add anything more substantial, something behind the captain caught the ensign's eye.

While the ensign had looked on the captain with happiness, whatever she saw caused her face to erupt with unbridled glee. Curious, Janeway turned around, expecting to see something akin to a birthday cake topped with a wormhole back to the alpha quadrant. Instead, she saw a slim, blue-clad officer half-stumble into the cafeteria and absently, though politely, request an overlarge helping of Neelix's cuisine. He said something affable, patted her hand, and returned to brewing the remainder of his food.

"Mileena! 'Leena, over here," called Ensign Powell, who then turned to Janeway with a sudden look of muted horror. "If, of course, you don't mind, captain," she added quickly.

"Go right ahead, Ensign. I fear I've not been the best company today," Janeway said calmly. Perhaps the two young women would entertain each other enough for her to finish her lunch and flee back to the bridge.

The second young woman approached the table and delicately set down her tray, though she remained standing in the presence of her captain. Janeway looked at her thoughtfully and realized she'd never interacted with this ensign before. Their new guest towered over the sitting pair, a few long onyx curls threatening to flee out of its holder onto her copper brown skin. That is, if its owner didn't collapse first. Janeway noted a familiar set of dark rings around the young woman's pale yellow eyes; she saw them all too often in her own mirror, encircling her blue-grey irises. Indeed, the young woman appeared to be swaying gently until Janeway intervened.

"At ease, ensign. Please, sit down."

"Thank you, captain," came the softly rasped reply. She let herself slowly into the chair that Ensign Powell had procured and went to pick up a spoon when her hand was suddenly trapped under the palm of the other girl.

"You're here. You're actually here. Does that mean," the young woman trailed off hopefully, then restarted when she received no reply. "Does it mean that it's working?"

A smoldering glimmer appeared in those tired eyes, intriguing even the captain, but the ensign shook her head. "I have twenty minutes left on the timer I've been running since 0600 hours. It's better for me to be here than staring blankly at a console. At least, that's what Neelix tells me."

Ensign Powell squeezed her hand affectionately. "He's right, you know. It's not good for you to be alone in the lab all the time." The other woman managed a weak smile and stirred the green-grey food on her plate with her free hand, drawing a face in it with the tip of her fork before scooping it unsteadily into her mouth.

Janeway was puzzled. Most of the scientists were assigned to astrometrics or stellar cartography, neither of which were known for being especially empty. In fact, she'd had more than one complaint from the Doctor or Seven for the almost carnival atmosphere that the physicists would occasionally summon.

"Ensign, excuse me, I don't think I got your name," Janeway interrupted.

"My apologies. Ensign Mileena Irae. Proteomics," she added without being prompted.

Janeway's confusion deepened. Proteomics? Since when did the crew have a dedicated biology lab?

The young woman anticipated her questions and continued. "I was assigned to Voyager to help monitor the bioneural circuitry and to act as an adjunct to engineering. My specialty is dynamic systems-" She paused. "But, I interrupted your conversation. Tell me, what are we discussing today, Lauren? Talaxian physiology? Again?"

The other ensign didn't miss a beat. "Nope, we're doing Kazon history." She grinned at both of her lunch companions.

"A fascinating topic," added Janeway evenly.

"Mm, not quite," said Ensign Irae, between hasty bites. "Lauren, is it really appropriate to drag the poor captain into yet another of your hobbies?"

The freckled, rosy-skinned girl took a plaintive tone. "But it's boring in transporter room three. All I can do is read." She turned her face towards the captain and blushed. "Not that I mind, ma'am. It's far better than scrubbing the Jefferies tubes with a sonic toothbrush."

Any sort of retort that Janeway would have made was clipped off by a beeping from Ensign Irae. She looked a bit mortified and tapped a shining device on her wrist. "And that would be twenty minutes." She cast a longing glance towards her plate and stood up, inclining her head slightly towards the remaining two women, not waiting to be properly dismissed.

"My apologies. I must return."

"But you just started," protested Ensign Powell. "You need to eat!"

"I will. Later," she shrugged.

As she lifted her tray, the brown-haired Ensign reached out once more towards her crewmate. "But you'll join us tonight, right? 21:00 hours in the holodeck? Please?"

"If I can," said the departing young woman non-committally, then turned around to deposit her tray in the replicator before disappearing into the hall.

Ensign Powell sunk her hands into her cupped palms. "Ugh, which means she won't show up, again, and we'll need to send the Doctor after her to make her get some sleep. Again." She dragged her hands down again and sagged in front of the captain. "I'm so sorry, captain. It seems I've cluttered your lunch. I do appreciate it, though," she said, dejection furrowing her otherwise smooth face. She too stood and cleaned her materials off the table.

The captain allowed a curt nod. "It is good to see my crewmembers caring for each other. Dismissed." The freckled engineer nearly fled out of the cafeteria.

Janeway was privately amused. She'd found the entire exchange very informative. For one, she would need to find some way of doubling the duties of the transporter operators. And second, she had apparently located someone who was nearly as much of a workaholic as she was. It was as much comforting as depressing to know that someone was subjecting themselves to that sort of torture.

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Mileena Irae reached deck seven and broke out into a sprint. There'd been a hold-up in the turbolift, something about a broken coupling on deck eight, and now she was 2.15 minutes late on the timer: potentially enough to waste a whole day's worth of experimental materials. She swung around the bulkhead, not noticing the crewmembers who pressed themselves against the grey walls for fear of being mowed down by the panicking scientist.

She slammed a few commands into the control panel outside of the door, then flung herself through the doors of the lab. Still in motion, she shouted towards the back kiosk. "Deactivate containment field and release security protocol. Authorization Irae gamma six two. Reinitialize in three seconds."

"Acknowledged," replied the computer.

She darted through the opening as the field sprang back behind her with a jolt of blue and a faint zap. With trembling hands, she removed a set of clear thermoplastic polymer plates from a glowing incubation tray and uncovered each one on the scuffed metal bench. As almost an afterthought, she pounded on the cover, stilling the flickering images within.

"Computer, initialize sterilizing pulse at one second intervals for 30 seconds."

A mild alarm sounded. "Warning. Radiation pulse is hazardous to organic life."

"That's the point," she muttered, low enough for the computer to ignore. "Proceed." At the last moment, she grabbed a set of IR- and UV-screening goggles and slipped them on before she was temporarily blinded.

The lights dimmed slightly and Mileena felt her skin warm uncomfortably as she laid out a series of carefully-labeled vials. Being in the same room as the sterilizing radiation was never a good idea, but she was pressed for time and a little increase in her risk of tumors was an acceptable cost. She uncapped each plate and swiftly injected the liquids into each. A wash of greens and reds spread across six of them. The seventh emitted a sad puff of smoke before turning a pale gray.

"Dammit," she whispered, then put the remaining trays into another intricate bank of machines.

"Computer, initiate spectroscopy and real-time imaging scans alpha through delta at .005 ms intervals. Display on the far console."

"Acknowledged. Analysis commencing."

Mileena paused and tried to catch her breath. Within seconds, she'd know if she'd overgrown the other samples to unusability, meaning she'd get to start over and wait another twenty hours for the samples to reach the appropriate stage. Leaning heavily on the counter, she wished once again to be back at her lab in the Daystrom institute, where there were gleaming robotic arms and a bevy of eager helpers whose only jobs were to push cells from place to place. Here, though, it was only her...and occasionally the Doctor, whose aid usually came at the cost of scathing commentary.

"I'm a doctor, not a lab assistant," he would say in that clipped, perpetually insulting tone.

Certainly not worth the aggravation today, especially since she was just rerunning a week-old simulation.

The hum of the sterilizer ceased and she slipped off the goggles, tossed them on their hook, then closed her pale yellow eyes. She let her head slump forward as she gripped the edge of the lab bench for stability. It was tempting to nod off, just for a moment, but she couldn't risk being late for the biweekly meeting with the Commander. She didn't necessarily mind the briefings, even though they rarely worked as she wanted. She'd give a report, he'd ask some questions, and they'd have some intellectual discourse. Then, they'd banter a little about the ship and its goings on. It was surprisingly relaxed for a formal meeting with a superior officer, she realized, especially given what Lauren told her of the stern and uncomfortable meetings she was forced to endure. On the other hand, he has been her only direct report for the entirety of Voyager's time in the Delta Quadrant. She spent more time around him than she would otherwise, which gave them the opportunity to develop a sort of professional rapport. Well that and his guilt about needing to end every session in the same way. His brown face would go grim, he'd tap his padd a few times, and decline most of the requests for equipment and personnel. They'd part ways and she'd return to her lab to sulk.

She shook it off and straightened up again. No, fatalistic thoughts were completely superfluous at the moment. With anticipation, she gazed at the monitor and tapped in a few commands at the neighboring console. Another screen sprang to life and began assembling the images into a stunningly illuminated animation. For the first time in almost 48 hours, a legitimate grin broke across her face. The samples were not overgrown. They'd reached appropriate maturity...well, all except the one that chose to die early. That would need to be autopsied at a later time. She shifted her eyes towards it and gave it a glare, mentally accusing it of betrayal before acknowledging that a vendetta against a dish of tissue was likely a sign of mental collapse.

The computer alerted her to the completion of its task. Mileena compiled the data, dropped the field once again, and went out into the main section of the lab. Reinitializing the field, she sat down with a thump into one of the scorched chairs and prepared her report. The samples had demonstrated significant structured growth, commencing in synaptic activity and generation of scaffolding and stabilizing proteins. There were limited aberrant connections and clear evidence of pruning when some of the dendrites had gone awry. Vesicle transport was at the correct location and at an acceptable rate, though Mileena frowned when she calculated that it was down 2% from the last trial. Still, it was a success. In 48 hours, she had made a section of the bioneural gel learn from a set of programmed stimuli.

"Beautiful," she whispered to the screen, and thoughtfully pressed her finger against it before terminating the display.

She swirled idly in the chair and looked up at the ceiling. Her results were exciting, she supposed, but not nearly as flashy as a 12% increase in warp drive efficiency or the discovery of yet another dead end wormhole. Ah well. When they returned to the alpha quadrant, she'd get to show off her advances. Assuming, of course, that they hadn't been obsoleted in the 75 years it would take them to arrive within spitting distance of a scientific institution. She stilled the chair and got up, nervously fidgeted with the padd, then put it down again.

To distract herself, she pulled a vial of viscous blue solution from one of the otherwise empty cabinets and dumped it on a plant near the wall. They'd been a present from Kes while she was still aboard. A way to brighten up the otherwise sterile interior. Somehow, they'd survived through all of the turmoil, a fact that Mileena attributed to both her green thumb and the fact that the lights were on almost 24 hours a day. Then, she reached to the base of an arched and serrated leaf, clipped it off with a smooth nail, and chewed it thoughtfully. It was a type of mint, she'd been told, if mint had been bred to be bitter and slimy. She found the herb barely palatable, but the chemicals in it took the edge off her hunger and her anxiety. She swallowed the green mash, gathered up her padd, and headed off to the conference room.

A few minutes later, she was shuffling uncomfortably in front of the conference room. A grim-faced ensign strode out, which Mileena took as her cue to slide in before the doors shut with a hiss. She put the padd on the table without looking up and touched a few embedded controls, causing a screen on the far wall to spring to life. She nodded towards it, turned back to Chakotay, and began her presentation.

"Commander, th-" the words died in her throat. She swallowed again, as the unpleasant taste of the plant rose back in her throat. Next to the broad-shouldered man sat Captain Janeway, one eyebrow cocked gracefully across her forehead and a sardonic smirk across her lips.

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Attempting to recover, she forced a smile. "Captain. I am pleased you chose to join us." Unconsciously, she twisted her hands behind her back, digging her nails into the palm of her hand. Already, this was disastrous.

"Yes, well, I've been trying to be more involved in the day-to-day running of the ship while we have a welcome lull in our activities." There was no reason, Janeway thought, to confess that she'd traded reporting duties with Chakotay to compensate for all the aggravation she'd put him through. He was just handing her the reins.

The ensign raised one eyebrow in return and offered, "Would you like me to review the research from the beginning or have you had the chance to go over the previous updates?" Her demeanor slipped from uncomfortable to controlled and Janeway mentally praised the young woman's composure.

"That won't be necessary, Ensign. I can bring myself up to speed after the meeting."

"Very well." The young woman slid the padd across the table to the Commander's waiting hands. He picked it up and scrolled through the animations as the Ensign spoke.

"Over the past thirty days, I have rerun the most recent set of simulations and initiated a second protocol using controlled bursts of visual information. The synaptic activity among the gel sections increased almost 68% over an otherwise undisturbed 48 hour period. This was repeated twice and I am confident in my conclusion."

"So the bioneural gel can learn without active input. Fascinating," he murmured. Ensign Irae was unsure of the veracity of his comment, so she chose to ignore it and move forward. Or at least, she tried to before the captain cut her off.

"You're teaching the bioneural gel," she said, arching an eyebrow to convey her surprise.

"Yes, Captain. My group at the Daystrom Institute was stationed aboard the ship to monitor the use of the bioneural gel and to," she paused for a moment, "investigate acceptable ways to expand its functionality. That included ways of training it to adapt."

The captain leaned forward and narrowed her eyes, forming the beginnings of a patented Janeway stare. "And where did you obtain bioneural gel? We had barely enough to begin with when we initiated this trip."

The younger woman was disturbingly unphased, as if she had rehearsed this very question. "We had three samples for our own use, which was anticipated to be sufficient for the journey. It was not. Fortuitously, after Neelix infected the bioneural gel packs with his cheese, three of them were found to be irreparably damaged. I requested that their contents be transferred to me once it was determined that they were unusable even as salvage."

"I see," continued Janeway, the glare fully spreading across her face. "And who, precisely, decided to give you access to one of the most precious commodities on this ship."

"I did," interjected Chakotay.

The laser-like stare rotated towards the senior officer, who did his best not to shrink back into his chair. "I consulted with Lieutenant Torres and we agreed that some good should come out of that disaster rather than throwing the packs into the replicators for reprocessing."

Janeway relaxed into mere annoyance. "Well, I see that my input wasn't required for that particular decision."

"Given the incremental and experimental nature of my research, Commander Chakotay suggested that he act as my contact rather than bother you with biweekly reports. However, now that Seven of Nine is on the crew, she may be a more logical choice due to her familiarity with bio-technological interfaces." Again, the young woman kept her gaze level with the captain, the muscles in her cheeks smooth and her expression almost Vulcan in its serenity.

"I will consider it," said the captain, her jaw set in a frown. "Continue the briefing, Ensign."

The ensign's pace quickened and the images on the display flickered faster. "I've concluded that it is feasible for us to implement a training program for certain key systems. This would enhance the adaptability and function of the circuitry already present in the ship. I've estimated that there could be up to a 30% increase in helm control speed. "

"Heady words," retorted the captain. "But before I let you loose on crucial systems, I will need some proof of concept beyond a handful of microscope slides."

A broad smile unexpectedly dawned on the broad, curving face of the younger woman. The edges of her amber-shaded eyes crinkled warmly and her body seemed to throw off whatever tension had lived in her blue-clad shoulders. She gestured towards Chakotay, who returned the padd across the table. The ensign's fingers danced across the surface and she walked forward, placing the padd directly in front of the captain. "Computer, download Irae training logs one through two hundred."

Janeway's eyes widened to their full extent as the screen filled with streams of numbers and images. She tilted her head and rubbed the side of her face with the palm of her hand, unable to process all of the data as they whirred past. "These are..."

"Practice runs in the lab, in the holodeck, and in one shuttle temporarily fitted with a rudimentary version of the interface. With," she added swiftly, "all regular systems functioning and a termination device ready should any fluctuations occur."

Janeway whirled towards her first officer, still aghast, and spread her fingers in annoyed wonderment "You let her put untested hardware into one of the shuttlecraft? What would have happened if something went wrong?"

"Our tests indicated," replied Irae, not giving him a chance to answer, "that the most likely outcome would be a failure of navigation. However, the interface is such that it could not access other critical systems. We would be dead in the water, but otherwise intact." Her tone returned to being clipped, detached, and professional.

Chakotay continued her train of thought, though with a less detached tone borne of practiced years of handling his superior officer. "Captain, what you see here represents five years of constant work by the proteomics lab, regardless of the limited materials and personnel that she has been assigned. It was the least I could do to test the outcomes of her research."

"Why wasn't any of this brought to my attention?" The captain resisted the urge to rub her temples to drain off some of the aggravation. Just as frustrating as the subterfuge was her being omitted from the excitement of testing new theories. The scientist in her railed against the detached command facade that she was required to maintain.

The girl gave a shrug and began to tick off a few concepts on her hands, her head tilted up as if she were gathering information from the distorted stars outside of the window. "I'm not sure how large the network can get without losing efficacy and wasting gel. There isn't a standardized training program in place yet; some people I've tested seem to adapt far quicker and I need to find out why. I do worry, Captain," and she turned her pale face back towards the table, "that an experimental system interfacing with navigation or weapons could have unacceptably unpredictable results. Failure is acceptable, and sometimes desirable, in the lab. But in practice, we require reliability." Her voice trailed off and Janeway noticed a tiny slump in her shoulders. She seemed to shake it off just as abruptly as it showed.

"So, what did you find," asked Janeway slowly, attempting to moderate the continuing build-up of indignation and irritation.

"The shuttlecraft maneuvered with a .6 second improvement in response speed after a 10 minute session while the vehicle was stationary. In my lab, after several thousand hours of training and use, I have reduced the duration of processing time by five seconds for continual input tasks, such as inputting data, that typically take between 10 and 15 seconds. For automated tasks that typically take around 72 hours, the interface can compress that to about 55 hours." A grin played irrepressibly at the edges of the girl's lips as she watched the information sink in.

The captain's mind reeled with the influx of information. Seemingly without her knowledge, one of her ensigns had designed a biological system that could significantly augment the entire function of the ship. A five second improvement could mean the difference between avoiding an attack and taking a hit to the shields. Saving more than half a day's processing brought them that many hours closer to reaching the alpha quadrant. Janeway let her demeanor relax. This was still a Starfleet vessel and, even in the most unorthodox of situations, exploration and experimentation were the norm.

"If you are interested," the young woman continued, "I would like to demonstrate the interface. I have a bioneural console in my lab that serves both as my research station and my experimental subject."

Janeway mulled her response. Part of her was furious at the ongoing machinations, no matter how well-intentioned, perpetrated by her crew. The other part was insatiably curious about the expanding research. It was outside Janeway's usual purvey, but the young woman had put obvious and meticulous care into everything she had presented. Rewarding while punishing was often her least favorite task and this was no exception.

"Very well, ensign. I will visit tomorrow at 0900 hours. However, from now on, all material acquisitions by your lab should be routed through me for final approval. And don't expect me to hand out rare materials as readily as the rest of my senior staff."

"Of course, Captain," answered the girl, barely perturbed. "I will have a full list on your desk by 2300 hours."

The captain raised both eyebrows and allowed a thin lipped smile. "Make it 0700 hours tomorrow morning. As I recall, Ensign Powell was quite excited to have you attend her event this evening. It's unlikely I can procure everything overnight, even as the captain."

The young woman gave an almost imperceptible sigh and her face dropped into something more friendly. "I would hate to disappoint her." she said, breaking into an unexpectedly informal tone. Then, she fixed her gaze back on Chakotay, who seemed somewhat less uneasy than he had been just minutes earlier. "Which reminds me, with your permission, I would like to continue having Ensign Powell assist me with technical modifications to the circuitry. Lieutenant Hargrove and Crewman Doyle have volunteered to oversee some of the other installations once the project goes forward."

Janeway furrowed her brow, but said nothing as Chakotay nodded his head. "As long as they do this on their off hours, I have no problem." He turned towards the Captain. "Is that okay?"

"Yes, fine," she without inflection.

"Also," and for the first time, the young woman sounded tentative. "I would like to approach Seven of Nine for some advice on this circuitry. Her experience with the Borg neural interface would be invaluable. However, I don't-"

"I'll ask," he said reassuringly. "Whether or not she'll accept is another matter and," he said putting up a cautioning palm, "you may not like what she has to say. She finds much of the bioneural interface annoyingly primitive."

The ensign nodded in agreement. "Still, I need to try."

"Well then, Captain, if that is all, I'd like to conclude this meeting," remarked the commander with false joviality.

"Before you go, I do have one question, ensign. Why is it that you require materials and staff from other departments?"

Janeway saw the shoulder slump again, slightly more pronounced and accompanied by a brief intake of breath and a flaring at the nostrils. However, it was Chakotay who answered. "Well, proteomics is an incredibly specific field. Given our limited personnel and the time it would take-"

His explanation was cut off by a communication ping. "Bridge to Captain Janeway."

"Go ahead Tuvok."

"We're receiving an unusual signal emanating from the moon of an M class planet approximately half a light year away. Language and source is unknown, though it is broadcasting on the usual frequencies."

"On my way." She rose, tugged down her jacket, and nodded towards the Ensign. "Dismissed. And be sure to enjoy your party tonight." She spun on her heel and strode away. Chakotay took a moment to reach out and touch the forearm of the Ensign, who breathed in and out slowly.

"You did well, Mileena. It'll be okay."

"Thank you, Commander. See you later."

With that, the conference room cleared.

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Mileena returned to the lab and collapsed across one of the outer consoles. "Well, that was an almost unmitigated failure," she informed the room, which failed to acknowledge her complaints. "Antagonizing the captain and embarrassing Chakotay are definitely going to do wonders for my scientific career. Hey, maybe I'll get to do my experiments in the brig if I annoy the Captain enough."

After indulging in a few minutes of self-pity, during which time she paced anxiously around the main office, she resumed her work in preparation for the captain's visit. Retreating to the rear kiosk, she dragged out a metal stool and dropped in front of the experimental apparatus. She unfastened the locked metal casing and unfolded three screens. After a moment's consideration, she put on the projection goggles and set them temporarily to clear.

Gingerly, she removed the protective shielding from the bioneural console and pressed her palms into the glinting metal surface. The gel packs rose, then depressed slightly, bulging out the sides as she adjusted the shape with a few undulations of her fingers.

With a sharp intake of breath as preparation, she vocally triggered the initiation sequence. An array of tiny needle-like projections rose from the spongy surface and plunged shallowly into her skin. She took a few more breaths and activated the secondary system. With the sound of whirring machinery, a robotic arm came down and plunged a metal probe through each forearm, then a handful more in an arc around each wrist, as she gasped and allowed tears to form in her eyes. She gave herself a few more seconds to adjust to the sensation, vibrating her hands slightly to make sure the contacts were firmly intact.

Abruptly, the pain ceased and she relaxed again. "Thank you," she whispered to the gel. "Just make sure that you're leaving everything but the free nerve endings intact. We can't afford to get sloppy."

She knew that it couldn't hear her. Still, it was a constant source of gratitude and amazement gel had learned that particular nerve impulses decreased task performance. Within a few weeks of her developing this method of interaction, the gel had adapted and generated a mild local nerve block after she was correctly positioned. Now, the remainder of her neurons were in contact with the bioneural gel and she could begin her work.

"Alright, we need to run through all the test protocols. The captain won't be using direct neural stimulation, so we need to adjust the sensitivity higher without generating feedback. That said, let's make sure everything is working according to plan. Think we can do it?" She paused, as if awaiting a reply, then continued. "That's what I thought. Okay. Computer, load flight simulator beta. Add 40...no, 70% randomness. Let's make things a lot more fun."

Moments later, she felt as if she were sitting at Voyager's console, surrounded by the sensor and weapons displays usually manned by the bridge crew. It was the next best thing to a holodeck program, except she was in her own lab and there was no danger of the safety protocols failing every time someone sneezed on a power coupling. Ahead of her, the viewscreen showed a suspended array of approaching Kazon vessels in standard attack formation.

"Great. Computer, initialize simulator using integrated sensitivity. How good have we gotten?"

Twenty minutes later, she had her answer. Beads of sweat had formed across her forehead and pooled uncomfortably at the base of her neck. The moist warmth on the top of her hands suggested that she'd started bleeding from the contacts. Her head pulsed a drumbeat of pain. This was probably the absolute limit of what she could handle at the moment. However, the projected ship was still in more or less one piece, the Kazons were disabled or running, and the entire crew wasn't dead. She could imagine what a pilot as skilled as Tom Paris could do if he got his hands into this technology. The thought let her push a breathless smile through the discomfort.

The smile faded as noticed an unpleasant fact: she'd forgotten to engage the safety protocols. She could have burnt herself, fed back and shorted out her own nervous system, or somehow contaminated the ship's computer with her thought patterns. This was the fatigue, she guessed, but it was no excuse. Sloppiness could be fatal and would need to be corrected immediately.

"Computer, personal note: if I attempt to engage any program when directly interfaced, prompt me to engage the safeties. If I do not respond, shut down the console until it is reauthorized. Now, initiate them."

"Acknowledged."

She sagged into the chair, tugged at her immobilized hands uncomfortably. She shook her hair back and forth a few times to shake out the droplets, then restarted the demonstration. For the next few hours, she adjusted the sensitivity and difficulty of the simulation, increasing the gain on the console until it acted as if she weren't wired directly in. That would be what the captain would experience when she visited. Assuming, of course, that yet another red alert didn't send the ship into a virtual shutdown.

A gentle chime sounded behind her. "Warning. Tissue damage is approaching unacceptable levels. Discontinue usage to avoid a hard shutdown."

With a vocal and profane protest, she disengaged the bioneural interfaced, raised her hands to her face, and pulled back the goggles, keeping her eyes squinted shut until she was ready. Then, she looked down. Her skin, usually a warm brown, tinged with a bit of olive when she was tired, was covered with rivulets of ostentatiously red blood where it wasn't burned away completely. Definitely overdid it. Flexing her fingers experimentally, she watched in fascination as the red-black skin cracked across her knuckles. She was once again grateful that the nerve block would stay in place for a few more minutes. She gazed at the tray where she kept her own dermal regenerator. She could usually avoid an unfortunate trip to sickbay by healing herself, but only if she respected her body's limits. Not today, though. She'd need the Doctor.

Gingerly, she sprayed down the console with disinfectant and folded the display back into the wall. Now the block was fading and the sensation began to flood back into her brutalized skin. Gritting her teeth in a combination of pain and irritation, she said, "Ensign Irae to Sickbay."

"Hello Ensign. Was this round of testing successful?"

"Extremely so," she said, wincing with every aching second.

"Ah, so you'll be needing both the dermal regenerator and topical anesthetic. Lovely. I shall have them here for when you figure out a way to hide the damage from your crewmembers. Sickbay out."

Mileena considered a site-to-site transport under Powell's supervision, then brushed it aside. No, it would be the long jaunt through the corridors. She threw on an archaic lab coat, tucked her hands into her pockets, and hoped that the blood wouldn't seep through. With a final glance, she resealed the lab and briskly walked to the doctor's office.

After successfully dodging any questioning gazes, she reached sickbay, where she was subjected to a series of snide comments and unpleasant treatments. As a change of pace, the Doctor substituted his implied threats with a formal warning: the next time she approached him for serious medical intervention, he would report her to the commander and recommend that the project be discontinued.

Once finished, Mileena debated heading to the mess hall. Instead, she headed to her quarters and collapsed on the bed, staring balefully into the warp-distorted starfield. The dressing down had left her feeling decidedly dismal about her project. She glanced at the clock and sighed. Already 1700 hours. She had promised Ensign Soohoo that she would take over part of her beta shift in the human metrics lab. It had been a worthwhile barter, allowing Mileena a few extra hours to work on her projects earlier in the week, but she was simply not up to it. She flexed her hands a few times, grimacing as the newly-crafted skin resisted her movements, and considered her options. Bailing out seemed the only logical course.

"Computer, locate Ensign Soohoo."

"Ensign Soohoo is in her quarters."

With a groan, the dark-haired ensign rolled herself out of bed and made her way across deck four to the crewman's quarters. The petite Korean woman greeted her, looked her over with coal-black eyes, and, in the next breath, said, "Wow, you look terrible. Go get some sleep. You can take my shift tomorrow." The door slid closed with a snap and Mileena drooped gratefully into the doorway.

Back in her room, she flopped onto her stomach and nestled into a bundle of rumpled blankets, running her fingertips idly over the rough texture of the striped fabric. When was the last time she'd spent more than a few moments in here? Three days ago, maybe? Enough to shower and have a 20 minute nap? It felt strange to be home and essentially off duty.

She settled onto the bed, instructing the computer to wake her in two hours. That would probably be enough to keep her out of sickbay. The last time she'd been awake for almost five days straight, she'd collapsed in the mess hall, resulting in a week's worth of chiding by the Doctor and Chakotay. A bit of faked embarrassment for being overzealous had kept her out of serious trouble, but that might not work again. With luck, she'd get enough rest to get back into the lab, finish up the testing for tomorrow, and head off to Lauren's gathering without fainting again.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Kathryn Janeway gazed over Ensign Kim's shoulder and frowned. The sensors continued to pick up the mysterious distress signal. Or at least, that is what they thought it was. A repeating set of sounds, relatively simple in composition, broadcast on all subspace frequencies. It was either that or a warning to stay away from that location. Tuvok had advised caution, given the overall hostility of this quadrant. Chakotay counseled that they approach and attempt to get readings with something other than the long-range scanners. She agreed with him, though her decision was tempered with the knowledge that a few days on a Class M planet could provide them necessary resources or a bit of direly-needed shore leave.

She fidgeted with the console and peppered the young man with questions about his attempts to clean up the signal. With carefully concealed annoyance, he confirmed that he was, in fact, doing his job to the best of his abilities. At her instruction, he adjusted the gains, performed a handful of frequency modulations, applied a bilateral Z transform, and otherwise put the signal through the precise series of changes that he would have performed without her standing there. A few minutes of "yes ma'am"s later, she stepped away and returned to her chair.

Minutes ticked by and the starfield rapidly lost its appeal. There was nothing in the blurred points of light to hold her interest. With a wave of her hand, she absconded to her ready room to organize her thoughts.

Another pot of black coffee was delivered from the replicator to her waiting hands as she sat down at her desk. She scrolled through some duty reports, attempted to make a note in her personal log about something, and then gave up. None of this was actually what she wanted to do. What she wanted to do was to go down to Deck 4 and have a sternly-worded and largely unwarranted conversation with the ensign about insubordination. Well, that wasn't it at all. No, her annoyance actually came from the disquieting realization that she was out of the loop.

Janeway prided herself on her scientific acumen. If there was a technique, she learned it. If there were a theory, she'd explore it. If there was a series of fascinating phenomena, she wanted to throw the ship through the middle of it. Yet in this situation, almost five years of work had gone completely unnoticed and unreported. What she'd seen today was a fraction of what had been accomplished and she had best catch up before she, what, looked like a fool in front of one of her crewmembers?

There was a little more than that, though she didn't admit it beyond the back of her mind. She was also accustomed to wresting control of a situation by merely being present in it. She'd been to a hundred briefings where a flash of her blue-grey eyes would not just silence, but also crush, any opposition or ill behavior. But the girl had been unflappable. The more Janeway pushed, the steelier she'd gotten. This was the sort of thing she expected from Tuvok and not from some slip of a thing who had seen more years in high school than in Starfleet. The girl had a poker face that would clean Tom Paris out of his rations for a week.

Janeway shook her head. Nothing would get her back onto equal footing quicker than familiarizing herself with the materials and, even better, finding ways to fix it...or tear it apart. She scooped up the padd and began reading. Within two minutes, she put it down and almost threw it across the plexiglass surface of her desk. The notes were dense, almost unreadable; they were closer to a personal journal than any sort of report. They lapsed out of the common language of Starfleet and into some notation that she barely recognized. No wonder Chakotay had been so reluctant to supply the young woman with resources: he probably couldn't figure out what was going on. Janeway wondered how the rest of the ensign's lab could put up with that degree of shoddy recordkeeping. She reminded herself to instruct the scientist in proper protocols when they met tomorrow.

Janeway leaned her head against the plush grey chair and rolled her neck against the pillow on the back, trying to ease some of the tension out of her red-clad shoulders. Fine, there had to be another way.

"Computer," called Janeway, "are there any spoken logs from Ensign Irae's research?"

"There are three hundred and seventy nine research logs and five hundred personal logs from Ensign Irae."

Janeway gave her patented wide-eyed head shake. Well, at least the girl had taken the time to provide an alternate method of communication. Where to begin? Perhaps with some of the notes that the Ensign found most interesting, which would be the ones she recorded.

"Are there any logs that contain visual information?"

"Three hundred and seventy nine research logs contain visual information."

"Wait, so she has a video of every log?"

"Unable to answer. Please state a valid command."

"Computer, display most recent visual log."

"Unable to comply. Log is in process."

Janeway looked at the timepiece on her desk. The delicate black hands, a relic from her time in the Traditionalist encampment, displayed what would have been 4:30PM before the transition to the ship's standard time. Thinking back to lunch, the captain calculated that the young woman had been on duty for at least ten hours, something that Janeway tried to discourage when the ship was not on full alert. It ruined morale and decreased performance when everyone resembled the sleepless dead. That was another thing she'd need to rein in.

Janeway chided herself for her hypocrisy. After all, when was the last time she'd taken more than a few hours to comfortably slumber in her carefully-decorated quarters? How many hours of leisure time had she frittered away by doing exactly what she was doing now, staying on a task that most definitely did not require her attention? She pushed the thought aside.

"Computer, display the most recent non-active log."

Her tabletop monitor sprang to life and the ensign's broad nose, sparkling eyes, and chaotic hair came into view, followed by the rest of a small room almost filled with a combination of archaic and cutting-edge machinery. Janeway tried to make out what she was looking at, but instead the Ensign's voice came through, a conversational tone quite in contrast with the professional or exhausted demeanor she had presented earlier.

"Proteomics log Stardate 51440.09: I've started the newest cell cycle growth patterns, so there's not much to report from that end of things. I mean, I could film each of the cell divisions, but that's boring even for me. Plus, isn't that the equivalent of pornography?" A tiny laugh rippled out of the girl and Janeway smiled without meaning to. The camera panned back, then followed the young woman to the right side of the bench.

"So I've been trying to work on the calculations that we-Ensign Powell and I, that is, have been using for the somatosensory transform. We've done a little adjusting, but it's still not enough to permit adequate visual input. Which, as you know, is incredibly annoying!" Her voice became raised, but there was hardly any anger in it. She was teasing herself and the listener.

The camera followed the young woman upward and Janeway found herself screen-to-screen with a trifold display of glimmering equations. Fascinated, she sat back and listened as the young woman went through, step-by-step, everything that had been changed since the last update. Rows of yellow numbers and green symbols, occasionally struck through with red, scrolled by at a slow and reasonable pace. Every integral was noted and complemented. Every variable had a name. And when the amber-eyed woman finally stopped speaking and bid the viewer a quick farewell, Janeway noticed that almost fifteen minutes had gone by. The captain forgave the terrible notes. But only somewhat, as was her prerogative.

Janeway loaded another log and once again watched the young woman bounce through her scientific explorations as if she were giving a tour of some popular vacation destination. Janeway felt that envy rise again. It was so rare to see someone still taking pleasure from their duties. So many people had slowly changed over to merely dragging themselves through the tasks, especially after the rounds of tragedy that had befallen them. But this burst of life, hidden below decks, was still fresh and green.

Eventually, Janeway sat back and closed her eyes, just...listening, even if she didn't quite understand what was being discussed. Obviously, the ensign had someone else in mind when she was speaking, but Janeway found herself feeling like she was somehow the target. There was a warm familiarity in the girl's voice that Janeway found appealing. It was like a one-sided conversation with a dear friend.

"Bridge to Captain Janeway."

Startled, she shut off the recording. "Go ahead Commander."

"We're within visual range of the phenomenon."

"I'm on my way." She glanced at the clock again. 7:30PM. She'd sat through almost three hours of logs without realizing. For a moment, she felt ashamed. These were public logs, true, but the ensign correctly believed that no one was going to be interacting with them. Perhaps the young woman would not have been so open had she known that a pair of dispassionate eyes would be watching her work. The thought fluttered away as the Captain entered the bridge.

"Onscreen," she commanded. With a quick glance, she noted that the bridge crew had failed to cycle from alpha to beta shift. That criticism of the Ensign would have to wait.

A reddish-brown moon filled the viewer, vaguely reminiscent of Mars, save the dark silver-black veins that ran across the surface. She sat down in her chair and asked, "What are we looking at Mr. Kim?"

"Sensors indicate that the moon is almost entirely composed of silicon, with some strontium, beryllium, and a handful of heavy elements we've encountered in this sector. There are also large deposits of iron and aluminum in clusters around the surface."

"Any evidence of ships or defenses? I'd hate for us to be surprised," she said smoothly.

"Negative, captain. We've not detected any interphase radiation or other signs of a cloaked vessel," said the young ensign.

"Life signs?"

"Also negative. Also, the neighboring M-class planet has evidence of colonization but no evidence of organic life."

"A possible extinction," she queried softly.

"Unknown." She could hear his head shake.

"It might be worthwhile to send down an exobiology crew to take a look," Chakotay interjected.

"We'll do it in the morning," she said, shutting him down. "Right now, our priority is that distress call. Can you pinpoint it?"

"It's near the moon's equator," said Ensign Kim, his fingers dancing across the console. "There's a lot of interference from the surface metals, though, so it may be tricky beaming down."

"And the shuttlecraft are all too heavily damaged from our last encounter with the Borg. They won't be ready for another 48 hours at least," continued Chakotay.

"We'll have to take our chances," Janeway said, firmly. "Commander, Tuvok, assemble a team and get down there."

"Captain, that would not be advisable," warned Tuvok. "It appears that the moon is in an extremely unstable orbit. Based on its present position, it will escape the planet's gravity in approximate three point seven days. "

"Any idea of what is causing this," she asked.

"Not at this time. We cannot discount the possibility that whatever is causing this instability may be dangerous to the away team."

"Since we plan to be out of here in under a day, we should be fine. Have Engineering figure out a way to reduce the backscatter and make sure that the transporter rooms are standing by to get you out of there if you run into any trouble."

"Aye, Captain," the broad-shouldered man said as he exited the bridge.

"Sorry, Ensign Powell," muttered Janeway under her breath. "It looks like your party will need to wait."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

The holodeck was already bursting with crewmen when Mileena finally stumbled in, almost an hour after she'd intended to arrive. The alarm had failed to pierce the solid veil of sleep that had descended immediately upon her when she closed her eyes. Now, still waking up, she tried to make an attempt at being social before relieving yet another crewman from part of his gamma shift. She slid into the crowd, attempting to identify the few people she knew, before trying to head to the synthesized balcony on the other edge of the room.

"Leena. Leeena," came a drunken song from behind her. A cloud of alcohol enveloped her as Doyle approached and swung an affectionate arm around her shoulder.

"Hello dear. Lauren sends her regrets. The captain decided to launch a rescue mission in the middle of the night. I was instructed to watch out for you and to show you a good time. So, what good time would you like today?"

Mileena shrugged off the sweating man and carefully steered him towards a table, where he teetered precariously before setting himself down on the wooden stool with a huff. His sandy brown hair was matted to his leering face and his off-duty clothing was drenched with unspeakable fluids.

"You'll be sober enough to work with me tomorrow, right, William?" she scolded. "I don't want you vomiting all over my console."

"Dear, dear me," he said with mock affront. "I would never dare introduce something other than my own blood onto that precious machine. However, my dear scientist," and he bent low towards her pale face. "I will only sober up if you try to outdrink me."

She narrowed her eyes to Janeway-quality slits and let her eyelids flutter. "Are you attempting to blackmail me with my own sobriety? Are you crazy?"

He didn't respond to her. Instead, he spun a few degrees on the padded stool and called out, "Barkeep! A large mug of your most rank Cardassian ale for our delightful de...guest." He was all teeth when he returned to face his drinking companion.

"Seriously, Will? Cardassian ale in a room full of Maquis?"

"Well, now they know I mean business and so do you." The frothy, offwhite beverage served with its customary slice of Cardassian lemon appeared in front of the Ensign with a flourish of towel by the holographic waiter. He waltzed off while Mileena stared warily at the drink.

"Well, go ahead," the drunken officer urged. She picked it up, sniffed it experimentally, and then wished she hadn't.

"By the dark moons this stuff is foul," she said, pinching her nostrils shut.

Ensign Dalby swung a chair over to the two of them. "It tastes just as bad, but it'll do in a pinch when you've been fighting the brewers for as long as we did. Go ahead, Leena. I have six replicator rations on you that you won't be able to finish more than two sips."

The young woman was incredulous. "You're...betting on my drinking habits." The ex-Maquis nodded.

"Are you really that bored? Fine, put me in that pool. Another three rations says I down the entire mug." Dalby made a signal and someone tapped a padd, then waved back.

With that, she put the steaming glass to her face and, steeling herself against the flavor, drank the entire draught in a single gulp. Then, she used every ounce of willpower to keep from spewing the entire concoction over her tablemates. There were not words in her vocabulary that could adequately describe how terrible the beverage was. The assault on her olfactory system had been only the opening volley. Its texture was viscous and unnatural. It burned the back of her throat, which blessedly dampened the overwhelmingly rancid taste.

She slammed down the empty mug and took in a deep breath to a smattering of applause. Next came the fit of coughing and another force of will to restrain the nausea. Someone was reaching over her shoulder to hand over her share of the replicator pot...15 rations...while Dalby was procuring her something, anything, to blast away the flavor. A few rounds of peanuts later, Mileena's taste buds had finally recovered.

"Right, right, so what the hell was that for?"

"The ale? To loosen you up," said Lieutenant Doyle, suddenly sober after shaking off the synthehol. "You worked nine straight shifts this week. As a superior officer, it is my duty to make sure you don't work yourself into the ground or get yourself killed. So I'm getting you good and drunk..."

"...so I can miss the gamma shift I'm supposed to be covering in twenty minutes," she said miserably. He looked a little surprised. "What, you think I like wearing my uniform to a party? No can do, Will. I slept during swing. Engineering needs someone down there to monitor a coupling replacement. I'll be fine as long as no one screws up."

"Mileena," he persisted. "I know what you do to get your supplies. You barter, you trade, that's fine, but there's a limit. We don't want to see you screw up and ruin everything. And what would the captain say if she found out what you were doing?"

"Hah, the captain," said Mileena, throwing a few salty snacks into her mouth and chewing messily. "Well, I know Chakotay has turned a blind eye to my activities for now, so I'm guessing she'll say nothing so long as he keeps his mouth shut during pillow talk."

"Oh? Please," retorted Dalby. "You think they're sleeping together? There are however many people wandering around a moon in the middle of the night looking for a beeping...beep. No one who is getting laid would do that. She's as dry as a-"

"Let's...leave the talk of our captain's personal and physical characteristics for another time. The heat death of the universe, perhaps," demurred Mileena.

"You know," said Doyle, "speaking of personal and physical. I've heard that you and Ensign Powell have finally, you know, made it official." He furiously worked his eyebrows and made an obscene hand gesture that demonstrated what level of officialness he believed had taken place. She slapped his hands down onto the table with drunken force and they both cackled.

"If by official, you mean I'm continuously steering her away from my lab and into the arms of the entire engineering staff, then yes. It's official: I'm trying to get one of you idiots to sleep with her."

"I've tried," said Doyle, his face drooping, "but I swear she only has eyes for you. It's Mileena this and Mileena that. I was in the lab and she said the funniest thing," he said, mimicking their friend's bubbly tones. His impression was interrupted, though, by someone who sounded remarkably like the other ensign projecting her annoyance from behind them.

"I can't wait to see Mileena naked on her console, enjoying the sort of attention only I can give to her, right boys?"

Everyone swirled around, some with more stability than others, to see the Ensign scowling at them from a slightly wrinkled uniform. The din in the holodeck dropped to a disconcerting level of whispering. Mileena gripped the table, her skin paling more than usual as she watched her friend grow livid. The willowy scientist rose unsteadily and took two steps forward.

"Sorry I'm late," continued Ensign Powell. "Janeway wanted all three transporter rooms on alert. I was just relieved by some pitying gamma shift kid who felt bad I was missing my own birthday."

"Lauren, sweetie, they were just playing," Mileena said as she toppled forward. Lauren caught her, though her body posture suggested she would have just as well let the young woman fall face-first onto the sticky holodeck floor.

"They're always playing. You, however, are drunk and have no excuse. If the captain is coming to your lab tomorrow, it will do you no good to be wildly hung over." She half-dragged the drunken scientist towards the door. "Good night, boys. Do be useful in the morning."

"She is screwed," whispered Doyle conspiratorially. "There's nothing good that can ever come from seeing the captain."

Back in her quarters, Ensign Powell was running cold water over Ensign Irae's curved, flushed face, trying to conjure sobriety out of the haze of Cardassian ale. The blue-clad scientist had finished retching the remainder of the repulsive liquid into the sink and was now trying to clean up enough to go back on duty. The disapproving looks that Powell was shooting her were blessedly accompanied by a toothbrush and mouthwash.

"Thank you," she hacked through a raw throat, relishing the taste of mint that finally obliterated the last of the alcohol's effects. "You're a lifesaver."

"Yes, well, if you decided to treat yourself somewhat better than pond scum, I'd have to save your life less often."

Mileena, even though she was only on the cusp of sober, managed to suppress a comment of how lifesaving merely allowed her friend more unfettered access to the scientist in their mutual free time. She reached out a trembling arm instead and attempted to draw her friend closer to her.

"Lauren, listen. About what the guys were saying..."

"I know what they say, 'Leena. I'm there most of the time." She sounded hurt in spite of her attempts to mask it and dodged away from the other girl's outreach.

"And I know, at least, I think I know, where we stand. I can't give you anything you want, Lauren. I'm essentially married to my work." Mileena said. "And you, I'm not even what you prefer. I remember that the first year, it was all we could do to keep you from following Tom Paris up to the bridge at the start of shift."

Lauren snorted softly and walked out of the room without responding. A little steadier on her feet, Mileena followed her. "Listen, I'll start taking better care of myself and you find some time to sort through the entire engineering staff for a date, okay?"

The freckled young woman smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes, and her posture was far too closed off to be happy. "Yeah, sure. I can start with Holder, maybe? I've heard he's a sweetie. Anyway, you should go."

Mileena wanted to smooth things over more, but she took the opening and fled out into the hallway, hoping that the dizzying swirl of the hallway would clear enough for her to read the tricorder. It would do no good for her to volunteer to take someone else's shift and then screw the whole damn thing up, ruining the swap for both of them. Taking care of someone else's scut work hadn't been so difficult back when she was getting six hours of sleep a day. Just a bit longer, she swore to herself, and it would all go back to normal.

A few minutes later, she was propped up on a wall in engineering, watching the readings and trying to ignore how much her friend was hurting. It would sort itself out after a few nights; it always did. Still, she wished there were some way to give Lauren what she wanted without bedding her. As soon as she figured that out, she'd implement it. Hell, given the state of the crew, she could probably bottle it.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Chakotay adjusted his face mask more closely over his light brown skin and exhaled with effort. The atmosphere had proved too thin for comfortable exploration, necessitating a supplemental breathing apparatus that he found bulky and awkward, even in the lowered gravity. He envied the Vulcan crewmember who seemed unaffected by the lower oxygen content and bounded confidently across the pockmarked surface.

He'd divided the away team into groups of two and they had spread out radially from the transport site, the only usable one for several kilometers. Once out of range, they'd be unable to get back to the ship without sprinting to this location. Luckily, the beacon seemed to be coming from relatively nearby, though the dim light of the larger planet was the only illumination beside the glittering, unfamiliar stars of the Delta Quadrant. He'd more or less need to trip over it to be able to see it. The flashlights they'd brought were woefully inadequate for a late-night search and rescue, but that seemed to be the norm on away missions. Chakotay took another stilted breath and continued forward, hoping his tricorder would reveal something fascinating so he could return to the ship and his normal breathing patterns. Obviously, the lack of oxygen was making him grumpy.

A few minutes later, a chirp came through his communicator. "Commander, we've found something," said an urgent female voice on the other end. "About one kilometer west of the transport site."

"I'm on my way," he responded, motioning for his companion to follow him towards the slightly panicked voice. He was briefly puzzled, as Ensign Harper was generally unflappable in her duty performance. The reason for her disquiet became evident in her next sentence.

"This is a first contact situation, sir, and I am unable to proceed adequately," she reported. "I have attempted to communicate our good intentions, but we're just standing here, staring at each other."

"Continue staring, Ensign. Don't make any sudden movements and keep your posture as open as possible," he replied, breaking into a quick jog. The breathing apparatus complained with every heavy step and he suspected that arriving at his destination sweaty and wheezing wouldn't do much to impress the aliens. Neither, though, would having an inexperienced crewmember accidentally initiating an unpleasant exchange with what would inevitably be one of the delta quadrant's more hostile inhabitants. As if, Chakotay noted with irritation, there were any other variety of delta quadrant inhabitants.

By the time Chakotay had reached the site, the other crew members had assembled and were warily standing in a semicircle behind Ensign Harper. She had a tricorder on the floor in front of her and was making a slightly ridiculous gesture that attempted to show that she was unarmed and harmless. Or, perhaps, suffering from some sort of mental illness that caused her to flail her limbs wildly. Whatever was standing before her seemed unimpressed by her actions, but neither did it take any overtly aggressive actions, so there was that. When she turned towards the sound of her commander approaching, the figures did as well, allowing Chakotay his first view of the aliens.

They were at least as tall as a human, but broader and more solidly built. They seemed to be vaguely humanoid, though their appendages and head were not discernably separate from their massive bulk. Their skin, or what Chakotay thought was their skin, was a glittering lattice of glossy points that overlapped like scales across their entire bodies. Most striking were the lightning-shaped veins that seemed to entwine their bodies, seemingly the same composition as the moon's markings. Which would imply, the commander marked with misplaced amusement, that they were naked. Either that or they were wearing some sort of impressive full-body armor. He chose to believe the latter.

Two of the creatures stood in front of him while another was on the ground near the remnants of some sort of vehicle. They must have crashed with impressive velocity, since the site was almost completely reduced to a pile of fine sand quite unlike the rest of the glassy and rocky surface. The upper part of the aliens' bodies followed his movements as he dropped to a walk and spread his hands in front of him, gesturing for the other crewmen to move backwards as he did. No sense in putting them in more danger than was absolutely necessary.

"I am Commander Chakotay of the Federation Starship Voyager. We received your distress signal and want to provide aid," he said as clearly as he could from beneath his facemask.

He watched the aliens and he swore he saw some sort of movement, but nothing came out. He took a few steps nearer, carefully measuring his steps. Behind him, the ensign brought up the flashlight enough to cast more illumination without blinding the creatures. Chakotay took a closer look at the trio. He could see more clearly now what appeared to be legs and some sort of spindly apparatus emerging from the backs of the standing duo. The one on the ground, however, was bent into a strange shape. Whether it was a fatal break or merely some sort of reparable damage was not clear to Chakotay, though the others' proximity and posture suggested that their companion was probably alive. He couldn't see the ship behind them well enough to make a good guess at its shape, though he thought he saw a wing peeking up from behind a rock formation.

He tilted his head slightly. "Ensign, report," he said quietly.

"Three creatures, commander. They appear to be silicon based, which is probably why our sensors did not detect them. They are not noticeably different in composition from the surrounding surface," she replied uneasily.

"Silicon based," replied Chakotay incredulously. "I only know of two others: the Horta and another encountered by Captain Kirk several hundred years ago. And if I recall my Federation history, communication with those races didn't go smoothly either."

He turned his attention once more to the other creatures, who themselves seemed to be involved in an intense discussion. They had tilted towards each other and one seemed to be making an extremely subtle gesture towards the ground. Swallowing hard, Chakotay took another step forward, grabbing his tricorder with a slightly sweaty palm.

"I'm going to look at your crewmember," he said, though he knew they probably couldn't understand him. He inched forward more, bending slowly at the waist. "If he is injured, maybe we can help."

One of the silicon creatures also bent, blocking Chakotay's path, and he flinched. Instead, though, the creature reached out an appendage and began drawing in the lightly packed dust on the surface, creating a single line that extended horizontally between the two of them. Chakotay peered down and back up. Was it a division? A threat? A literal line in the sand?

"Commander, perhaps he is indicating that they come from the nearby planet," said a blue-clad lieutenant from behind him.

Chakotay nodded and attempting to pantomime just that. He pointed at the creatures, then pointed towards the looming planet behind them, and then down at the line on ground again. The creature made another small motion, which suggested assent. Chakotay pointed at himself, swept a hand towards his crew, and then pointed up. Above, he could dimly make out the light blue glow of Voyager's warp cells as they maintained a geosynchronous orbit above the transporter site. One of the aliens extended an appendage upward and then rotated it behind them towards the crumpled remains of their vehicle. Apparently, they too had come from the stars.

"Any signs of antimatter, dilithium, or something that would suggest a warp signature," the commander queried, still keeping his eye on the others on the planet.

"Negative, commander. I'm sensing a combination of helium and what appear to be hydrosilicate molecules. Some sort of combustion-based propulsion."

"So a pre-warp society, but one that has knowledge of subspace communications? Fascinating."

The creature had resumed drawing. As best he could tell, Chakotay saw four simple blocks, one of which the creature smudged out with a broad stroke of a flat limb. Perhaps one of the crew had died during the impact. Another block had a small, waved line drawn through it, suggesting that the creature on the ground was in fact injured rather than dead. Chakotay took out his tricorder and carefully waved it around the figures on the sand, then turned his face up hopefully. In response, the creature moved back and Chakotay was able to approach the fallen crewmember.

The creature on the ground shifted slightly at his approach. Chakotay went down on one knee and brought the tricorder across its body. The device was clearly struggling to make out the difference between the alien and the surrounding planetoid, enough so that he folded it away and took out his own flashlight, bringing it across the creature's torso in a long, slow motion. He could see where the impact had caused the body of the creature to literally crumble in places. If the creature had a nervous system, it was probably in severe pain.

"Chakotay, report," came the sudden voice of the Captain.

He startled slightly and hit his comm. "We've encountered the aliens, Captain. They're silicon based. Three lifeforms, one probably injured."

"Silicon based?" He could hear the incredulity in her voice. "Do you know anything more about them?"

"Negative, Captain. We're having some trouble communicating with them. We've established that they're from the nearby planet and that we're here to help. Beyond that, the translators are ineffective.

"Any sign of telepathic activity, like the Horta?"

"I can't tell you, Commander. No one down here has felt anything, but I'd need Mr. Tuvok or Mr. Vorik to come to the surface before I can give you a conclusive report. And I would rather not have a mind meld occur in an uncontrolled environment."

"I agree. Is there anything we can do for them in the meantime?"

"Not without determining more about their physiology," he said, gritting his teeth slightly. He wished that he had more equipment here instead of a handful of useless tricorders and a bunch of dim lightbulbs.

"One of them seems to be, for lack of a better term, shattered. Is it possible to beam them to sickbay?"

"The transporters won't be able to handle it. There's still too much interference from the surface backscatter. We'd risk contaminating their patterns with that of the surrounding rock and ending up with an unpleasant amalgamation" she replied.

"Commander Chakotay," came the sudden smooth tones of the Doctor. "May I suggest a potential plan of action?"

The commander could sense the Captain's displeasure at the hologram's monitoring the communication channels against her express wishes. For an instant, he was glad that he was tramping around in the dust rather than next to her glowering form.

"Of course, Doctor," he replied, attempting to ignore his superior's displeasure.

"You could try a modified phaser blast to try and knit the creature together. It is possible that this will cause the silicon to fuse into a glass-like structure which may be sufficient to temporarily give the creature cohesion, at least until we can find some way to heal him."

"So you're saying I should attack him and hope that it fixes him right up," Chakotay retorted.

"Well, when you put it that way," the Doctor said huffily, "it doesn't sound prudent. However, I am sure you will come up with an acceptable solution using your extensive training in the medical arts. Doctor out."

"Commander, we'll keep working on the problem up here. For now, do what you can and keep me appraised. Janeway out."

Chakotay mulled the situation over in irritated silence. In spite of the ridiculousness of the idea, there was probably some merit to the Doctor's suggestion. Silicon could be fused into glass, which seemed to be at least a superficial component to the creatures' anatomy. It could, however, just as easily be jewelry. There was no way of knowing for sure. He also wondered why the creatures had made no attempt to try and heal their compatriot.

Standing back up, he pointed towards the injured creature and back towards the wrecked ship, then once again at the ground. He did not receive anything by way of response and, frustrated, he sighed, returning to the grouping of his own crew.

He noticed that two had drifted away and were now returning, their hands full of rocks. The two young men piled the rocks in a small pyramid beside the group. One took out his phaser and offered it, palm first, to the Commander.

"They're silicon, commander. Maybe if we showed them that we can fuse the rocks together, they'll be convinced to let us try it on them."

"Or they'll take it as a sign of aggression and attack us. No, it's too risky without some sort of communication first," the Commander said with a head shake.

To his surprise, one of the standing creatures approached him and picked up a rock, then pressed the glossy stone to its midsection. The part of its body that might have been the mouth opened and, to Chakotay's surprise, a sound came out. Or rather, a sound came from the vibration of the rock it held against its body. It tried again, this time slightly louder.

"Draaaa-viiik," it said, drawing out the syllables.

Chakotay's thoughts whirled furiously. Was this a name or a call for help? Why the rocks? Perhaps something ceremonial? Practical? He glanced around. This was obviously something that couldn't have been attempted earlier, due to the crash's pulverizing the surroundings.

He bent and lifted a black, silver-streaked rock, then proffered it to the creature, who took it from his hand and put it on the appendage of the other creature. This one, which Chakotay noticed was smaller and bluer than its companion, also held the rock against itself.

"Plaaaa-vvan," came the deep, rumbling sound from the rock's contact with the creature's body.

The Commander understood. "Ms. Harper, set the tricorders to detect extremely low frequency vibrations, then set up a link with our communicators. Next, adjust the output so that sound is generated at about five thousand hertz below maximum spoken amplitude."

The Ensign made the necessary adjustments and handed the modified tricorder to the Commander, who held it to his face and said, very slowly, "Chakotay."

He could feel the word vibrate his guts and tremble in his hands. However, it had the desired effect. The creature repeated after him, "Cha...ka...ta."

Well, it was progress.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Captain Janeway received the report from the surface with impatient satisfaction. Apparently, the creatures spoke so far below normal frequencies that the transponders couldn't detect them without modification. Engineering was working on something more sensitive than a hacked-together tricorder to use as a communication medium. In the meantime, Chakotay had attempted to set up a dialogue with the creatures he referred to as Plavan and Dravik. The communicators still couldn't assemble enough of the language to translate it accurately, so Chakotay was arduously attempting to convey the crew's good wishes. He assured her it was probably going to go smoothly and that he'd contact her with any breakthroughs, in essence sending her to bed while he handled the away team himself.

She turned the bridge over to the gamma crew and headed towards her quarters. Briefly, she considered locating Ensign Powell's party for a bit of late-night merriment. However, at close to 0100 hours, it was probable that it would now be too debauched for her to enjoy. After all, how many years had it been since she'd gotten completely and truly drunk, then engaged in a bout of passionate, uninhibited flirtation? About as long as she'd been with Mark and then separated from him. Perhaps longer, she muttered to herself.

Janeway shuffled around her quarters, performing her evening routine with fatigued hands and eyes. She contemplated taking another look at what her crew was doing on the surface, but contented herself with checking in with the bridge one more time to ensure that there hadn't been a breakthrough in the past half hour. Finding none, she slipped into a pale green nightgown and rolled into bed. As the minutes went by, however, sleep eluded her. She imagined being on the surface, trying to break the communication barrier with another fascinating lifeform. She imagined being in astrometrics, trying to chart their way back home with greater efficiency. She imagined being with Mileena, in her lab, teaching the bioneural gel. She wanted desperately to be a scientist again and less a captain.

Janeway corrected herself. She didn't mind the control and responsibilities that came with being a captain. Out here, though, they were unceasing and incredibly tiring. If she were on a Galaxy-class starship, it would be acceptable for the captain to periodically lose herself in labwork for a few hours. Now, though, if she wasn't ready to spring into action on the bridge, she could leave the crew struggling for guidance while she was up to her ears in research. It couldn't be done and she'd have to content herself with being a spectator.

She hated to admit it, but the months she'd spent on that planet, trying to research a cure for the virus that had stranded her there, were some of the happiest of her time in the Delta Quadrant. The pure focus on her work, absent any distractions except for Chakotay's gentle overtures, was so welcome that she almost ached for it. That, and, well...she had to admit that she enjoyed the entreaties even if she couldn't accept them. It had been inadmissibly pleasing to be chased and desired. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at the clock. An hour had passed and she was no closer to sleeping, especially now that her thoughts had turned to a slightly more exciting topic.

She turned up the lights and went to her console to read, but thought the better and lay back down. "Computer, play Irae science logs 125 through 150." If she wasn't going to rest, she would at least prepare for tomorrow's meeting. Yet several minutes into the recitation of data, she found herself drifting off, the young woman's melodic, uninhibited conversation gently soothing her to sleep. It reminded her pleasantly of being a child, hearing people she cared about chatting in another room, their mere presence making her feel secure and loved.

The logs were still playing when she woke up several hours later to start her early shift. Perhaps, she thought ruefully, she had absorbed all the knowledge encompassed in those hours of commentary. After making her toilette and running a comb through her long, auburn hair, a quick replay through one of the logs confirmed that she had not acquired any sort of osmotic learning skill and that she'd need to, once again, sit down and try to pay attention. The subject matter wasn't that far out of her purvey, she mused as she buttoned up the sweater of her red-topped uniform. It was the application that she found unfamiliar. Exciting, she supposed, though her fatigue muted any sensation to a dim whisper.

"Coffee. Black," she commanded, and the replicator obliged, a precious ration gone to supply her addiction. The steaming off-white mug in her hand, she strode out into the hall to begin her day. A few snappy salutes from the crew, some with more irony than others, and she found herself in the conference room, attempting to get a read on the situation on the surface.

Her senior staff was somewhat thinned, with Tuvok and Chakotay on the surface, but she made do. Of course, sometime during the night, communications had been disrupted. Apparently, there were periodic fluctuations in the stratosphere of the nearby planet that sent out plumes of ions into the thin atmosphere of the glinting moon below them. Sensors were barely able to make out the away team and their silicon companions, but there weren't any discussions with the surface. B'Elanna was, of course, working on a solution, but Mr. Kim was of the opinion that a wait-and-see approach would be most useful. The storm was predicted to last only a few more hours, which was approximately the time B'Elanna would need to reconfigure the deflector dish to push aside the plumes. The captain went with the young ensign's suggestion and, as a further bit of incentive, ordered the remaining members of alpha shift to their quarters for a little sleep. Gratefully, the room cleared of all personnel but Seven of Nine, who informed the captain that she was not required to regenerate for another three point four hours and, as such, would be in astrometrics.

The captain returned to the bridge, sat uneasily in her chair, and patiently sipped her coffee. So much of her job was either frantic combat or endless waiting these days. Exploration was a thing of the past, she felt. She shook her head and rubbed the thin spot above the bridge of her nose. Too much musing this morning, she admonished herself. What had gotten into her? It was probably lack of sleep. Well, might as well make the most of it.

"Ms. Nicoletti: status report," the captain barked.

"Systems nominal, Captain," came the clipped reply. "Engineering has been monitoring the levels of ionizing radiation to ensure they do not interfere with the operation of the ship. We've experienced a .2% drain on the aft starboard shields, but this is within parameters."

"Excellent," said the captain reflexively. What did she expect, really? They were sitting in orbit, babysitting a few away teams above the least interesting spheroid in the system. It would be absurd if not for the six valuable personnel and three injured aliens walking just out of her reach on the surface below.

"Any signs that the orbit of the moon is changing more rapidly?"

"Negative, Captain. The escape velocity and tangental movement have remained constant since Lieutenant Tuvok's initial calculations. By his estimates, we still have another 40 hours before the moon becomes unstable, barring any unforseen geologic events."

"What about the away teams?"

"We've reestablished contact with those on the moon. Two teams from exobiology were beamed down to the planet and have maintained open communication with us."

"Very well. I'll be in my ready room," said Janeway, then stopped and looked around. Who, exactly, was going to take her place in command with most of the senior staff off the ship or asleep? A red-clad lieutenant, a tall black man whose name she placed as Riely, stepped away from the helm and looked at her expectantly as Ensign Baytart moved over a seat. As she walked away, she heard the lieutenant call up a few extra members of beta shift to help man the sparse bridge. So he noticed their staffing problem, too.

She continued to nurse her cup of coffee, by now a thin cold liquid that tasted like a burnt out junction. There were any number of things she should be doing: duty reports, damage analysis, resource allotment. She turned her slate-blue eyes towards her computer screen and activated it, scanning through the various messages that had accumulated through the night. She glossed over them in turn: results from night repairs to a sensory array, a formal complaint about a crewman acting unprofessionally in a holodeck, a reminder from the doctor that crew physicals were long overdue, a book report from Naomi Wildman that made the captain pause and smile. The young woman was growing so quickly and, as part of her accelerated development, was making good use of the ship's library. Janeway marked that message for special consideration later on. And, submitted at 0250 hours, the supply request from Ensign Irae.

Janeway twisted her face into a mix of surprise, amusement, and consternation. The list was exhaustive, enough so that she found herself poking through to see if the ensign had included the proverbial kitchen sink. It was absent, if only because the ensign probably wouldn't crack jokes that early in the morning. Sterilizers, extra bioneural gel, a few sheets of reinforced tritanium, the use of holodeck 3 for twenty-four hours straight, permission for Neelix to personally bring food to proteomics at 1300 hours every day. It was the most absurd yet specific list that she had ever encountered. Janeway found herself wanting to grant all of the requests, if only to see what resulted.

She glanced at the antique timepiece and then back at the mountain of orange flashing lights, all of which demanded her currently frayed attention. "Computer, where is Ensign Irae," she queried hopefully.

"Ensign Irae is in Proteomics on deck 4, section five."

Well, it was still a few hours before they were scheduled to meet, but Janeway desperately wanted a distraction as she waited for news from the away team. Entering the bridge, she informed them to alert her as soon as any department had any news, then took the turbolift to a lower deck.

Nestled next to the aft torpedo launcher was an unassuming room that was obliquely labeled, "Configurable Science Lab 1." Janeway approached and nearly ran into the double doors that unexpectedly failed to admit her into that area of the ship. Puzzled, she stepped forward again with no result. Several seconds of ringing the chime failed similarly. Indeed, all she could hear from the other side was the ominous thud of poorly-balanced machinery. Raising an eyebrow in mild irritation, she punched in her command code, only to be met with further refusal. It was all she could do not to throw up her hands and shout at the door.

"Computer, allow me to access Configurable Science Lab 1."

"Unable to comply. A level eight force field is in effect."

Level eight, she baffled to herself. Was the young woman expecting the entire front room to blow out in an explosion of antimatter?

"Computer, disable forcefield. Authorization Janeway Theta two seven Alpha."

"Warning. Disabling forcefield may lead to biological contamination. Do you wish to proceed?"

"I'll take my chances," said Janeway snappily. She heard the hum of the forcefield behind the door disengaging and she went through to a most unusual sight.

What Janeway had thought was the sound of misaligned equipment was actually the heavy thump of early 21st century dance music. The synthesized voice was almost inaudible over the grinding baseline, though Janeway came to perceive the ensign's own voice, comfortably singing along with the relatively nonsensical lyrics. Even more fascinating than the unusual choice in ambiance was the ensign herself. Clad in a slightly worn white lab coat, curly hair askew and streaming in black rivulets across her shoulders, she seemed to be...dancing as she worked. The captain leaned against the doorway and an involuntary grin plastered itself across her face as she watched the young woman shimmy back and forth between lab benches, injecting chemicals into plates, ordering around the computer like it was a disobedient peon, and tapping on one of the terminals. It was an utterly uninhibited and unselfconscious display that Janeway greatly envied and, for a tiny moment, longed for.

For a few minutes, Janeway observed the young woman, but also let her gaze go across the rest of the room. The outer section was dimmed to only its security lights, while the part near the ensign was brightly lit. The lab was incredibly bare except for the section in which the ensign was working. All but one chair was neatly tucked into a clear section of beige table. The computers were sealed in a protective layer of polyvinyl acetate, their black surfaces signaling present disuse. There were no padds or any clutter save a single plant that, based on leaf shape, was being attacked by bugs. She made a mental note to bring it down to hydroponics for spraying. Having an infestation of pests in a biological laboratory would be as disastrous as anything a level eight forcefield might prevent.

Her attention shifted back to the ensign as the music dropped in tempo and changed its tenor. Janeway did not recognize the language and the translators were electing to ignore the musical input. That didn't seem to bother the object of her study, though. The ensign's body swayed in rhythm as she sang along, easily wrapping a practiced tongue around the non-human syllables, clearly enamored of whatever was being said even if she couldn't sing it in tune. It was during one of those choruses that she turned around and saw the captain, almost dropping the small piece of electrical equipment she was carrying.

"Captain, I'm so sorry. Were you waiting long," the ensign said apologetically. Her tone dramatically shifted with the next sentence. "You disabled the forcefield. Did you reinitiate it?"

"Computer, reinitiate bulkhead forcefield," replied Janeway, the grin still lingering on her face. Most on the ship would be hesitant to give their captain an implied command. As Janeway was rapidly learning, this young woman seemed to have almost no qualms about violating protocol, at least when it came to her science.

"Thank you, Captain. If any of my experiments go wrong, they could, ah, potentially contaminate bioneural gel elsewhere on the ship. I maintain a tight lab." The explanation seemed a little forced, though Janeway elected to ignore it.

"I appreciate your dedication to security, even if it seems overdone." The captain took a confident step forward and the girl waved her hands frantically.

"Wait, wait," she cried. "You'll incinerate yourself." Abruptly, the captain stopped and tensed up, watching a flurry of activity from the inner recesses of the lab. Things were capped and a liquid was misted over the entire surface, then the young woman told the computer, "Disengage all local security forcefields. Do not reengage until my command."

Janeway watched a shimmer of blue, followed by a shimmer of green, and then another shimmer of blue. Her eyebrows threatened to leave the top of her forehead.

"Two level 10 forcefields and a Borg restraining field? What exactly do you do down here," said Janeway icily.

"I'm protecting the ship," replied the girl coolly. The lovely freedom with which she'd comported herself before was being swiftly overwritten by this deadly calm. Indicating a red-emblazoned container with one finger, she said, "The materials in there could liquefy the brains of everyone on the ship if they managed to get into the ventilation. If I make an error, I should be the only one who suffers."

Janeway took a moment to reply. She'd been looking forward to this meeting but it had gone completely antagonistically from the moment she'd opened her mouth. Perhaps this relationship was better conducted through video logs.

"I...always appreciate the lengths my crew goes through to protect this ship," she said evenly, trying to redirect the flow of conversation. "I am not here, though, to criticize your security. I am fascinated by your research. Will you please show it to me?"

The girl's demeanor shifted slightly and she indicated that the captain should come closer. The narrow segment of lab was a third the size of the outer consoles, with just enough room for three people to stand comfortably without colliding with the field generators.

The ensign gestured around her. "This is the wet lab, which was my primary duty station in the Daystrom. It was recreated here on Voyager, though the accommodations are a bit cramped."

Janeway nodded, though she wondered why the lab hadn't been extended into the outer compartment. It might not have been sufficiently prepared for the others in proteomics, meaning they were assigned elsewhere.

The young woman pointed to a pulsing array on the left. "That's my computer, which has a bioneural chip augmentation. One of the best in the field. In front," she pointed to the neatly-stacked cabinets, gleaming apparatus, and carefully lined containers. "Is the cellular modification station. It's where I grow cultures and do microneural work. I'm almost at the point of phasing it out, but I can't get away from it completely."

Finally, she faced the arching terminal of the bioneural interface. She ushered the captain into the chair and engaged the display, which made the elaborate screen fold out to surround the captain's head. Next, she drew out a thinner mock-up of the helm control of a shuttlecraft and slid it over to where the captain was seated.

"This is the modified bioneural console. Before we get to the good stuff, let's run a baseline demo. It's a simple flight simulator with a few of our less enjoyable friends thrown in to ruin the fun. Start it verbally when you're ready."

The captain glanced over the brightly-colored terminal and placed her hands on it, finding it slightly more cramped than the terminals to which she was accustomed. The trifold screen sprang to life at her command and she spent the next few minutes letting her fingertips dance over the glossy black surface, easily outmaneuvering and taking down the blocky representations of ten Kazon ships whose pilots were, according to the simulation, brain dead. So apparently, the ensign had been designing a system around the least competent fighters in the whole galaxy.

Her lack of praise was noted by the ensign, who smiled and said, "It has several thousand settings, including one that would make battling the Borg seem like a skirmish. However, this is an adaptive machine and one must walk before one can run. Or fly." She moved aside the dummy terminal and gingerly uncovered the bioneural surface.

"Now for the fun part. I present the first known direct bioneural helm control in the Federation."

Janeway eyed it warily. The shimmering grey surface undulated without input, shifting back and forth so that it rippled like a living creature. It was only a few centimeters deep and slightly translucent. Underneath, she could see a more conventional circuit board that had been extensively modified with tubes full of heaven knows what liquids and free wire endings that arched like twisted roots into the gel surface. It made her uncomfortable to look at, let alone to touch.

The girl looked crestfallen. "Would you like me to demonstrate it for you Captain?"

"No, that won't be necessary Ensign. We're in the business of exploring new things. So, let's explore," she said with determination.

"Very well. The first step is to, um, wash your hands." She gestured to a spray bottle that smelled strongly of solvent. "It's almost impossible to clean otherwise."

Gamely, the captain sprayed herself liberally, coughing as a mist of alcohol and other disinfectants wormed themselves into her lungs. Then, at the ensign's instruction, she softly placed her hands on the moving surface.

To her pleasant surprise, it was warm and pliant rather than slimy and cold. It yielded to the pressure she put on it. Then, it started vibrating under her fingertips and rippling underneath her palms. She felt the temperature inch up a few degrees and then cool.

"I assume that the gel is mapping my neural activity in order to optimize the interface," the captain observed. "I am being stored."

"Correct, captain," the ensign beamed. "It's a learning machine, as I said. The more you work with it, the more it understands you and your particular style. Now for the tricky part." She took a breath and exhaled her instructions. "The console isn't working with your muscles. It's working with the nerve impulses you send to your muscles. As a result, you need to execute the commands without actually moving your hands. You need to think the movements rather than making them. It takes a little getting used to, but it comes naturally enough with practice."

The captain arched her eyebrows. "Very well. Shall we try the demo again?"

The next runthrough was a disaster. She couldn't keep her hands from moving their practiced, intricate pattern across the console. However, since the gel was expecting constant neural connectivity instead of tactile input, her flying was something even a first year cadet would be ashamed of. By the end of the simulation, the surface was agitated and a dark brown, while the captain was agitated and flushed pink. She turned her eyes on her host, whose probable mirth was concealed beneath a layer of sympathy.

"May I help you, Captain?"

"By all means," she said with a wry smile. "Let's see if we can't get me flying this thing a bit more straight."

The young woman came alongside the captain, reached down with both arms, and gently rested her ochre hands over the captain's, pinning them in place with the slightest pressure. The captain involuntarily closed her eyes and suppressed an indecorous gasp. The girl's skin was unexpectedly cool, especially given the warmth of the room. Her skin was calloused at the junctions of her fingers, but delicate and smooth everywhere else. A few strands of the Ensign's hair brushed against the captain's cheek, making her aware of the unusually close physical interaction she was having with someone who was, until yesterday, a stranger. She could feel the girl's quickened pulse where their wrists touched and the sliding of fabric against her shoulder whenever the girl inhaled and exhaled. It was utterly electric for reasons the captain did not want to understand.

"I'm sorry for the intrusion, but short of strapping you in, it's the best way to help you accomplish this. If you're not comfortable, we don't have to continue."

Her voice was soft, just centimeters away from the captain's head, close enough that she could feel the girl's breath dancing delicately across her ear. It was exquisitely intimate.

She flung her eyes open, hoping the young woman hadn't noticed, and said, "Understood, Ensign. Let's continue."

The second trial was markedly better. Even though her hands often tried to shift as usual, the scientist's position kept them firmly in place. Now, the shuttle was responding just a bit faster than she anticipated, moving with an incremental increase in speed to which she was not accustomed. Janeway found herself overshooting her desired target, forcing her to double back to return to the desired position. At the end, she found herself both fatigued and exhilarated. She left her fingers flat on the console, feeling the constant weight of her instructor, and took a moment to look at the white coat-clad ensign. Her eyes were closed and her face took a mask of extreme concentration. Janeway thought to withdraw her hands, but she chose to experience the physical connection a few moments longer. A second later, the girl's dark eyelashes fluttered up and she folded her hands into her lap.

Rubbing her wrists thoughtfully, the captain spoke. "This is an incredible advance. I want you to begin testing it with more pilots. Let's see if we can't give ourselves a tactical advantage the next time we try to outfly the Borg. "

To say that the girl was elated would have been an understatement. "You mean that truly? You'll let me field test this with Ensign Baytart or even," her voice dropped to a respectful whisper, "Tom Paris?"

"Field test, no," the captain said, dampening the girl's excitement. "But I want them to come in and try this program a few times to get a feel for it. You wanted holodeck time? I'll give it to you. I want to see the kind of increases we can get through this technology. Also, I'll bring Seven of Nine in this week. She will definitely have opinions on the efficiency."

The girl looked like she'd been given a brand new puppy. "Thank you. So much captain," she said with a trembling voice. "I promise not to disappoint you. This will be an incredible benefit to the crew."

"That is what I hope," replied the captain with an unforced smile. "I need to return to the bridge to monitor the away team. Thank you for inviting me down, Ensign." She rose from the chair and began to walk away.

"Captain," sang the girl after her. "If I may be so bold. You are one of the more skilled helmsmen...women...people," the girl stumbled. "I'd offer to let you have training sessions, but I know your schedule is so intense. So, if you want to come and practice when I am not here, I can provide you with the security codes and full safety protocols."

The captain turned around and lifted one side of her mouth in a teasing smirk. "You'd trust me with that sort of information after just one session."

The girl seemed not to recognize the humor. "Captain, there are few others on Voyager whom I know would take care of my equipment and my work as well as you," she said earnestly. "It is so wonderful to have someone who appreciates what I'm doing."

The captain felt a wave of fondness for the brutal honesty and the sudden vulnerability of the mostly unflappable scientist. "I would be honored to. Send them to me when you can and I'll find time to come down and fly your ship."

The captain strode out of the door, though not so quickly that she couldn't hear a poorly-restrained shout of success from behind her. She walked away, a smile on her coral lips, still rubbing her hands idly. She felt off center and her skin tingled strangely, which she attributed to the unusual texture of the bioneural interface lingering on her hands. Some part suspected, though, that her body was recognizing that no one had touched her with this amount of familiarity since Chakotay's failed seduction on New Earth. She mentally noted that she needed to spend a bit more time in Fair Haven, getting out some of this pent-up energy with something that would be less dangerous to enjoy.

Mileena nearly bounced into the mess hall to locate Neelix for her lunchtime repast. She'd chosen to go a bit later so she could have a chance to talk with him and to help cook, though the latter was driven by a selfish desire to trade some kitchen time for some biomatter to use in her lab.

The doors slid open onto an almost empty room. The Talaxian chef nodded towards her and hefted a silver pot of fruity-smelling liquid onto a brightly flickering burner. The substance splashed and the fire erupted into blue and green talons of heat. He seemed unperturbed, though one of the flames threatened to catch on the edge of his apron and light the whole thing ablaze. She approached cautiously.

"Mileena," he cried with typical joviality. "I was wondering if you were going to come before I closed down the kitchen until dinner. You arrived in the nick of time. The Eltnen leola-root sauce I'm preparing is poisonous in its first two hours of cooking."

She looked briefly horrified, then suppressed it. "Well, I'm glad to have avoided death yet again. Anything left that won't kill me?"

"I do have a fragrant salad and a yeast composite that makes an excellent bread." He brought out a plate and slid it to her, then leaned over and whispered conspiratorially, "The yeast is actually a Trabe concoction I picked up during the later parts of the war. Let's just say that I did some pretty unique business back then."

"I can imagine," answered Mileena, pushing generous forkfuls of the food into her starving gullet. She didn't think that something so disgusting in texture and composition could be edible, but she was in an expressly good mood. The grinning Talaxian picked up on this and gave her a second helping.

"You're looking chipper today. May I ask the occasion?"

"The captain came down to the lab and said that my work was impressive! She's going to give me more resources to do in-the-field testing! Well, close to in the field, but still!"

"That's wonderful," he said in the tone he reserved for everything from the birth of a child to locating an extra bundle of greens in the back of the pantry. She believed him, anyway.

"I know. I'm so nervous, but I need to keep thinking positively. And Neelix, it really is thanks to you that everything works so well. I couldn't have done it without you." She modulated her voice into one of sincere gratitude.

The Talaxian beamed as brightly as his cooking equipment. "Well, I'm certainly glad that someone on the ship appreciates my unique resourcefulness. I have to say it is gratifying to know that my years as a nomad have provided so much bounty to the crew. I must say that without me, Voyager would not be where she is today," he said smugly.

Mileena kept her smile in place. She felt guilty manipulating him this way. Feeding his ego was the surest way to continue to curry favor without being too demanding. And his contributions were numerous, though the most remarkable one had been indirect. Without him, the ship would not have received Kes' gift of a ten year push towards the Alpha Quadrant. He didn't need to know that.

He paused in the middle of his self-congratulation and assumed a more contemplative expression. "There's something a little different about you right now. It's not just confidence. You seem a bit lighter."

Mileena took in his words. "I think...I think that it's the same thing as you. I think that it's so nice to know that someone appreciates me. The captain was so gracious. I expected her to be cold and uninterested, but she wanted to be there. Actually wanted to learn what I had been working on." The praise bubbled out of her, erasing the annoyance she had felt when the captain arrived an hour early and caught her dancing around like an idiot.

"Well," said Neelix, clapping her on the back, "I am very glad that things are looking up. Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to add the neutralizing agent to the sauce to keep it from eating through the pot." He trotted away and began rooting through his shelves, whistling off key.

She brought the rest of her food to the back of the room and leaned against one of the cushioned grey chairs that faced out onto the unfamiliar stars. She scraped the edge of a fork around the outer circle of the pale white plate and took a few more dangerous moments with her thoughts. There was something else, too. Something that fluttered around the back of her brain in a most confusing manner. Had she imagined the captain's reaction when she touched her? That tiny slip in the captain's demeanor when...Mileena pushed it aside. It was an absolutely inappropriate line of thought. For starters, this was the captain, who was a virtual stranger. Plus, it had been a businesslike exchange of physicality that should, without question, not be mistaken for a sign of affection.

But oh, and Mileena let herself slip into the realm of fantasy, the captain's skin had been warm and the auburn-haired woman had responded without drawing away. Perhaps...She cut the thought off again. Maybe it was the bioneural gel sending impulses through the captain towards its usual target. She'd need to run a diagnostic. That could be dangerous if she were working in tandem with another flyer. Her mind slipped back into work mode.

She scraped the rest of the food into the recycler and headed back towards the kitchen. "Neelix," she called back towards the cook, "do you have anything for me to feed to the gel today?"

"As a matter of fact," he said, gesturing behind him with his yellow-festooned head, "I do have a dish of Gordian liver that seemed to cause rashes in most of the human crew. I bet that the gel would enjoy that. Though I recommend washing your hands afterward."

"Will do. Thank you!" She wandered into the refrigerator, pulled out the chilled dish of wiggling brown meat, and brought it back to the lab.

A series of digestive enzymes later, it had been mercifully reduced to its base components. She centrifuged out the proteins and injected them into the feeding conduits that ran beneath the base of the console. Underneath its protective coating, the gel undulated and flushed, as if it were grateful for the nourishment.

"Careful, Dr. Irae," she muttered out loud. "If you anthropomorphize your experiments, you run the risk of their suddenly springing to life and growing unstoppably over the lab, consuming everything and everyone in its wake until it's shut down unceremoniously with a flamethrower." No, she'd let the whole contraption get blasted out of the bulkhead before she'd take that sort of risk. Everything was too precious.

With that, she ran another twenty sessions of basic training before going off to crow to Lauren in the transporter room.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Chakotay fidgeted on the surface. It had been more than 24 hours since they'd beamed down and his patience was wearing thin. Contact with the ship had been reestablished and there had been nominal supplies sent down, as well as a partial exchange of crew, but they were no closer to a solution than they were before. Even leaning on Engineering to increase the speed of repairs had done little to make the shuttlecraft more available. To his surprise, the damaged alien did not seem to further degrade. It...he..Arkat, merely lay there, crumbled in pieces, while the rest of the aliens milled about.

The translators, with significant modifications, had finally begun to ease communication between the two races. The silicon-based lifeforms called themselves the Abraxians. They had not yet achieved warp, but had some form of limited space travel that allowed them easy transit from their home planet. While this exchange of cultural information was appreciated, the translation software had not advanced enough to convey complicated medical information. Discharging the phaser into the ground had, as predicted, caused the surface to fuse. However, his companions indicated with surprising vigor that his using the weapon was quite unwelcome. Now, Chakotay was awaiting instructions from the transporter room to see if the annular confinement beam could be modified enough to separate their new friends from the surrounding rock.

"Voyager to away team."

"This is Chakotay. Go ahead."

"We think we've made a breakthrough. We're sending down some lead-lined blankets. See if you can surround the Abraxians with them." Harry sounded drained, but hopeful. "We've reprogrammed the pattern buffer to screen out things that are touching the lead face but not the cloth face. That should keep the aliens from being sealed into the rock."

"It seems remarkably primitive. You're keeping the matter stream isolated via 20th century protective measures?"

"We've tried it a few different ways. The biofilter is just having too much trouble with the silicon and we don't want to keep you waiting any longer. Short of trying to shroud you all in chlorine gas, this is our best bet."

Laboriously, Chakotay used a series of gestures and a handful of words to convey the instructions to his companions. A few moments of deep, rumbling conversation occurred among the three lifeforms. An agreement seemed to be reached and Plavan gingerly wrapped her fallen crewmember with the blanket, then crawled next to him. However, Dravix stepped back and wandered over to their crashed ship. He, apparently, had been elected to stay behind.

"We're ready transporter room. Three to beam to sickbay."

"Acknowledged."

Chakotay involuntarily held his breath, then exhaled as the familiar shimmer of the transporter disassembled him and blessedly reassembled him among the glowing grey lights of sickbay. The doctor rushed towards him suddenly and he took a large step back as the hologram began to intensely scan the still shimmering form of the two aliens.

"Sickbay to transporter room three. The Abraxians have still not materialized," said the Doctor impatiently, frantically moving his scanner over the half-phased sparkles.

"We know. The Heisenberg compensator isn't responding correctly. Something about the ionizing radiation in the atmosphere combined with the composition problems," answered B'Elanna, stress ringing her words. "Attempting to reroute power to the phase discriminator."

Chakotay listened as the whine of the transporter beam fluctuated in volume and the glowing forms dimmed and began to solidify on the biobed. Chakotay nearly slammed his chest when he saw them.

"B'Elanna, keep them in the matter stream. They've fused," he shouted in horror.

Like the transporter accidents of the early 2200's, the two aliens had partially materialized merged with each other. Plavan's torso was angled impossibly out of Arkat's chest and her one visible limb flailed powerlessly out of their joined bodies. The streaks of crystallized silicon that had adorned their bodies mixed in unnatural swirls across their glassy skin. The resulting horror was quickly retaken by the transporter and held in place.

"Goddammit," B'Elanna swore, "We're just not able to discriminate enough. I can't bring them out without having that happen again."

"B'Elanna," replied Chakotay with increasing desperation, "try to screen out trace elements in the silicon. They're different colors. Maybe that means they're composed of slightly different materials." Why the hell hadn't he thought of that earlier, he berated himself.

"On it." The link went silent and Chakotay saw the matter stream shift in its composition. He could imagine the frantic attempts to both increase the power of the transporter and maintain the integrity of the signal while performing on-the-fly adjustments. A few tense seconds later, the figures came back into view, this time as separate individuals.

"Ah, there we go," said the Doctor without inflection. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't traumatize my patients in the future. I'm a doctor, not a counselor." He continued waving the medical scanner across them, his face becoming more and more furrowed as he went along.

The Abraxians seemed remarkably unfazed by the whole experience. Either that or the incredibly subtle motions they used to convey emotion were actually screams of terror. Chakotay was momentarily gratified that the translator was still unable to do their language justice.

"I'm so sorry," he ventured. "Our technology did not seem to interact well with your physiology. Are you alright?"

They did not answer and Chakotay dropped his head, then confirmed with the computer that the translator was functioning properly. There were probably no accurate words to describe the momentary horror of being trapped within another person's body. He lapsed into silence and stood there, mutely, watching the Doctor finish his investigation.

"Fascinating," intoned the Doctor. "They seem to be fully silicon-based entities. Instead of carbon-based cellular structures, they are composed of a complex network of silicate crystals. They have organ systems that I can't recognize, no visible means of breathing or digestion, and nothing that approximates a nervous system. They are a completely novel race and I will require further study before I can try to help them."

The Doctor retreated into his office and Chakotay was left alone with the Abraxians. He shifted back and forth in his regulation-issued boots, tense and disconcerted. His discomfort was mildly alleviated when the sickbay doors hissed open, admitting the stern form of the captain, followed by two gold-shouldered security members. She ignored her first officer and approached the two aliens, then clasped her hands behind her and looked at them impassively.

"I am Captain Kathryn Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager. We welcome you to our ship and hope we can provide you with medical aid." He recognized the edge in her voice. She was clearly displeased with everyone on the crew who had botched the rescue operation thus far.

"I deeply apologize for the transporter malfunction. Let me assure you that this rarely happens and measures will be taken to ensure it never occurs again." Her eyes shifted almost imperceptibly to regard the dark-haired man. His lips twitched and he swallowed hard in spite of himself.

There was predictably no response from the duo. Janeway looked at Chakotay, then to the Doctor through the door, and made a single open-handed gesture towards their guests.

"Are the translators still having problems with their language," she demanded. "This situation is untenable; we need to be able to communicate with them."

Chakotay glanced hopefully towards the hologram, who was busily typing away at his desk. The Doctor did not look up, but replied, "As far as I can tell, we are creating sound waves at a frequency they can hear. I must note that they do not create sounds by flapping folds of skin with air. They have some way of vibrating specialized structures within their torsos, which is why the rock trick on the surface worked so well. This is one possible barrier to discussion. Perhaps they find the sound of our voices unpleasant."

"Is it possible that the deck or the equipment is somehow absorbing these waves? Should we provide some sort of dampening field," added Chakotay, trying to salvage face. The Doctor quickly caused that possibility to fail.

"If you are implying that they are generating waves sufficient enough to vibrate duranium alloy but not the air around us, you have an exceptionally defective knowledge of physics."

The Doctor returned to the main area of the sickbay and resumed scanning the two aliens, taking some care to examine the lower limbs of both. "Commander, didn't you report that one of the aliens had sustained some sort of damage?"

"Yes. Arkat had shattered, which left him unable to move around the surface."

"Well, that no longer seems to be the case. Inasmuch as I understand their physiology, they both seem to be intact and quite healthy." He strolled away to fiddle with a set of displays, appearing to be no longer interested in the conversation.

"But...," trailed off Chakotay as he looked at the two aliens. Sure enough, the pieces of the broken lower limb were imperceptibly merged with the rest of Arkat. It was as if the damage had simply vanished. "What happened?"

"I believe," answered the Doctor, his patience thinning with every phrase, "that the transporter correctly assigned all the matter associated with Arkat to his body and that somehow, it was reallocated to the necessary location."

"Arkat, is your leg whole," said Chakotay, hoping for a response.

"Yes," came the rumbling answer.

The captain seemed delighted. "I am glad to hear that. Are you in pain?"

He did not answer and her frustration mounted temporarily, then suddenly subsided. "Is this how your leg should be," she asked carefully.

"Yes."

"How would you fix your leg on your planet?"

"Epoxy," said Plavan, making a labored gesture with her two upper limbs, mashing them together in a coarse gesture of joining. The Doctor turned around, interested once again.

"They simply glue themselves back together? How efficient," he said dryly. "I will advocate for that solution the next time someone decides to practice knife fighting with the holodeck safeties off."

The captain ignored him. "Is the third planet in this system your home?"

"Yes."

"Do you wish to return there?"

"No," answered Plavan. For only the second time in their interactions, Chakotay could hear an inflection. He just could not tell what it was.

"Are you in danger when you return?"

There was no response. Janeway turned to Chakotay and steepled her hands near her forehead. "They simply don't have words for certain concepts. Pain, personal well-being, danger, probably because these don't have any sort of meaning. After all, if you can be reassembled whenever you are damaged, there's no reason for you to limit your activities."

Chakotay picked up on her lead and tried to run with it. "When you go home, what will happen?"

"Nothing. We are gone."

"I don't understand. Where did you go?"

"We went to this moon. We are here, now." Plavan's intonation had changed to something even slower. Chakotay got the feeling that she was instructing him as if he were some sort of exceptionally slow child who was failing to grasp simple mathematics. He had a flash of inspiration.

"Chakotay to bridge," he said, tapping his comm.

"Bridge here, Commander."

"Harry, run a scan of the moon. Attempt to isolate isotopes of all elements we've found so far."

"Acknowledged. This will take a few minutes. Bridge out."

"You have a hunch, Mr. Chakotay," said Janeway. "But I suspect I have the same one. The reason we're having so much trouble isolating our guests from their surroundings is that the moon is made up of members of their race, somehow glued together"

"Correct," stated Plavan. "We are here, but we are leaving." Her voice sounded less labored and Chakotay inferred that the translator was finally adapting to the Abraxians' unusual vocal patterns.

"Leaving," mused Janeway. "That's why the moon's orbit is so unstable. Tell me, how are you leaving? Why are you leaving?"

"The minerals we require for nutrition have been depleted. We will turn to dust if we remain here."

"You stripped your own planet bare of nutrients and need to locate another one? That's not the sort of behavior we're accustomed to encouraging." Janeway's eyes narrowed and Chakotay felt his feelings of apprehension return.

"Our mode of reproduction requires significant resources. We do not have a choice except to take from the planet. If we stay here, we will all turn to dust." Arkat was the one to answer. His tone was quieter than Plavan's, which suggested that he was almost apologetic for the resource requirements of his people.

Her eyes still narrowed, the Captain paged the bridge. "Janeway to Bridge. Scan the planet for any of the elements found in our guests. I need to check something."

A few seconds later, Ensign Kim responded. "Negative, captain. There isn't any silicon or silicate crystals on the planet beyond trace amounts."

Janeway furrowed her brow. "Very well. What can we do to help you on your way."

"There are thrusters implanted in the surface. However, our ship crashed. Gravan was dusted. The thruster was damaged. We cannot rebuild it without his help."

"Can we help you fix the thruster," asked the Captain.

"Possibly," said Arkat. "Return us to the surface. We will try to show you how."

"Bridge to Commander Chakotay." Kim's tone was hurried and excited. "We've located several thousand isotopes. However, they're mapped in very particular patterns. Isolated clusters are packed near each other and none of the clusters intermix."

"About how many are there, Mr. Kim," queried Chakotay with a smile.

"Approximately three million, sir."

"A whole population, packed into a planet," said Janeway with incredulity. "Just...waiting to adventure into space. Let's see if we can't get them on their way."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Captain's Log, Supplemental: We have returned the last of the Abraxians to their moon and, with their assistance, have rebuilt and realigned the thruster to their specifications. All that remains is for them to break orbit towards their journey.

Janeway walked towards the crashed ship alongside Plavan and Chakotay. Dravix and Arkat had already arrived and were making last minute adjustments to the crude-seeming rocket. She continued to marvel at how such a simple construct would be able to readjust the entire bearing of a moon away from its home, but she was reassured that this was something that had been carefully plotted. The conservationist in her heart railed at their going somewhere else after despoiling their home, but she knew that Earth's history was littered with people who had ruined their land and migrated elsewhere, spreading their culture and leaving nature to slowly reclaim what they had destroyed. It was a familiar pattern and she didn't have the moral standing to adequately debate it with her hosts.

Instead, while she was with the away team, she had learned more about the Abraxians. They had realized almost a century ago that the planet would run out of resources, necessitating some way of taking the entire population offworld. Her hosts conveyed to her that they were the final group from the planet, sent with the last component to complete their moon-vessel. Gravan, their lead engineer, had been waiting on the surface for the remainder of his team to arrive. Unfortunately, their equipment, the supply of silicate epoxy, and the engineer had been destroyed when the ship crashed. With the rocket damaged, it was likely that the moon would veer out of its intended course and potentially lead to disaster. The distress beacon was their last hope for keeping their entire race from being destroyed.

A few of Voyager's engineering crew looked up as she approached. One of them spoke, "We've rebuilt the rocket according to what we saw on the surface, including the timing devices. It took a bit of doing, but it looks like it will integrate seamlessly into their vessel. Assuming this works, they'll end up where they want to go."

"Very good," said Janeway with an approving nod, then turned to the aliens. "What happens when you reach your destination?"

"The thrusters will put us into orbit around a desirable planet approximately 10 light years from here in the Regat system. Equipment in the center of the moon will break us apart and we will colonize that planet," replied Plavan. That could have been excitement in her voice, but the humans had long since given up on interpreting anything regarding inflection in the Abraxians.

"How do we integrate you into the rest of the moon," asked Chakotay. He was cognizant that there were only a few hours left before Voyager would be forced to break orbit or risk being dragged along in the moon's wake.

"We require significant heat, in addition to the epoxy, to fuse to the moon," answered Dravix. "The equipment needed for this, however, was damaged in the crash."

"Is there any way for us to recreate the conditions required for fusion? Our ship is capable of generating great heat and we can synthesize the epoxy if you give us a sample," replied Janeway. She didn't like where this conversation was going.

"Even if you could, there is nowhere for us to join. The people underneath where we stand are too damaged to accept us. They would likely collapse during the journey if we are attached; they may collapse regardless, which is why we must seal the existing network instead of becoming one with them," continued Dravix.

"The core provides us with nutrients required to sustain us through the journey, through a silicon network that seals the exterior of the moon. Since we cannot join to it, we could remain on the surface for a limited amount of time before our matrices lost cohesion and we turned to dust," added Plavan. "I have examined the possibilities, Captain. We accept this."

"Well I don't," said Janeway through clenched lips. She quickly considered her options. Creating an external mesh for just the three remaining Abraxians would be unlikely to sustain them. She could leave behind a supply of nutrients, as well as a replicator or shuttlecraft, but a 10 light year journey without warp would be hundreds of years long. But, then again, not for Voyager.

"Would you permit us to drop you off at your new home? You say that the planet is suitable for your habitation. Can you stay there and prepare until the rest of your people arrive," asked Janeway. "Even if it's hundreds of years?"

"Probably," replied Plavan. She paused. "As long as there are nutrients, we can remain whole for thousands of years. This action is acceptable to us."

"Very well. Our engineers will help seal off the rest of the moon and we'll get you back to the ship."

For the first time, though, there was dissention. "Plavan, this is an not-acceptable situation. It is best for us to remain with the moon," stated Dravix. "That is our duty."

"As your senior officer, I command you to accept this offer," Plavan retorted, then rotated slightly towards Janeway. "We will join you soon, captain. Thank you."

Janeway returned to the ship and gazed out the viewscreen onto the seemingly dead moon, which she had learned was actually teeming with life. It was fantastic to imagine millions of bodies, packed together by glue and mesh, traversing an impossible distance to settle a new world. Certainly, it was the most innovative means of space travel that she had encountered, albeit the most crude. Perhaps their structure made warp speeds dangerous or perhaps, like the spawning salmon of old, they were merely driven to migrate in this way by some ancient force. She smiled and lifted her head thoughtfully. It was truly remarkable.

A few hours later, she received notice that the moon had been prepared and that the remaining away teams had been recalled. The Abraxians were invited to the bridge as Voyager slowly backed away from the moon's unstable orbit. With a sudden glow, the thrusters on the surface fired and the ball of silicate life-forms began to rotate and veer from its previous position.

"Adjust heading, Mr. Paris, one-half impulse. I don't want Voyager to be hit like a billiard ball," she cautioned.

"Yes ma'am." The view shifted slightly as the ship changed heading to fly approximately parallel to the moon's trajectory. After a few minutes of watching, the Captain once again ordered the helm to change course.

"Lay in a course for heading 105 mark 021 at warp 9. Let's drop off our welcoming party." She turned to her alien guests. "Well then, you'll have about four days before you arrive. Please feel free to take advantage of the ship. We will program our replicators to provide the necessary nutrients." She smiled at them as they left the bridge.

It would be the last smile she would wear for several days.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Within five minutes of the away team's presentation, the frown lines on Chakotay's face had furrowed so deeply that the two blue-clad crewmembers before him worried that he might sprain something. The speed at which he paced around the periphery of exobiology had quickened enough that he was almost jogging through the clutter. Tension knotted his wrists and his shoulders were set with a soldier's posture, broadening his already impressive figure to something more imposing. Even when his back was to them, the scientists knew that he was seething as he tried to repress his annoyance.

"Why didn't you come to me with this sooner," he finally demanded, standing sternly in front of his subordinates. He jabbed a finger at the display behind him, which displayed a rotating three-dimensional representation of a ruined city, with a smattering of unfamiliar symbols indicating key locations. A few red lights highlighted areas of the rubble, which is where he pointed.

"We only just confirmed it ourselves, Commander," ventured Ensign Golwat, a stocky Bolian woman whose skin was an even paler shade of blue at the moment. "The away team couldn't do much processing down there with only a few members."

"I don't want excuses, dammit," he snapped uncharacteristically. "You're just surveying a new planet, not conducting an archaeological dig. You know how to take a history and make assumptions. Spending almost 20 hours processing the data is completely unacceptable."

"Commander, this was the fastest we could have done it. We even ran it through 'Leena's magic box to speed up the translation analyses," replied Ensign Soohoo, leaning back unconsciously away from the fuming first officer. "It took us over forty landings-"

He grunted at the ensign's name and imagined the favors that she'd be able to extract from the hapless exobiology team in return for a few hours on her biocomputer or, as they liked to call it, her magic box. How many days of work would they lose running around at her command? He couldn't wait for Janeway to give the approval to formally redistribute some of Mileena's requests to other personnel.

"So what are we going to tell the Captain," said Ensign Soohoo, warily. She much preferred dealing with the Commander, given his usually even temperament and his extensive background in exobio. Nothing good could come of her meeting with the Captain directly.

"Computer, locate Captain Janeway," Chakotay said by way of reply.

"Captain Janeway is in her quarters."

He checked his watch. It was almost 2100 hours, late enough that the captain might have retired for the evening. He chided himself. No, of course not. Kathryn would never be relaxed enough to let herself sleep more than was absolutely necessary. She was probably arm-deep in duty reports or engineering repairs. There was, after all, no better example to set for the crew then to have their leader frenetically working at almost all hours, regardless of her health or mental state.

"Chakotay to Janeway. I'm sorry to disturb you on your time away."

"It's quite all right, Commander. I was just going over Naomi Wildman's book report. What can I do for you?"

"I think you need to come down to exobiology. The away team has something to show you."

"On my way." The comm went silent.

Golwat and Soohoo exchanged a look of muted fear. He was going to throw them in front of the Captain, presumably to explain their utter failure to detect significant cultural and geologic findings on the planet. The commander had lowered himself into a chair and was combing through his hair with this broad fingers. He didn't seem to relish the thought any more than they did. It wasn't necessarily a culture of fear that Janeway maintained onboard, after all. She just had a tremendously narrow margin for error. Would she view this as sloppiness? A perception that they were slacking off? It was hard to predict. On the flip side, there wasn't much she could do to them that they weren't already doing to themselves. Reduced rations? Already gone. Extra work? There were only so many hours in the day. It would be yelling and storming, plus humiliation. Soohoo quietly typed a message to Mileena, suggesting that they wouldn't be trading shifts tonight, either, because the world was about to end.

The trio wallowed in their personal miseries until the Captain strode in. Her auburn hair hung freely about her shoulders, which were uncharacteristically relaxed. Perhaps she had been taking a little time to wind down. Well, she was in for an unpleasant shock.

"Well, Commander, Ensigns. What do you have for me at this late hour?"

He looked over at the two women, but turned back towards his Captain and led her over to the screen where the city layout was blandly rotating. Its fallen arches and toppled buildings were outlined in glimmering orange and twilight blue. Janeway leaned close, scanned it, and then tilted back.

"I'm not sure what I'm seeing here."

Although Chakotay began to speak, it was Golwat who threw herself on the bad news. "This is the result of the exobiology away team mission to the main planet. We mapped what would have been several large city centers across the largest continent. These were probably the capitals of their respective countries before, um, the, um, the decimation of the native populace."

The captain tensed immediately and whirled to face the guilty trio. It was as if a bulkhead had slammed down on her congenial manner, leaving only the fury and command focus they had come to know.

In spite of herself, Golwat kept talking. Maybe if she kept up the flood of words, it would cause the captain's bad humor to float away. "We, um, determined that the architecture was not, um, suitable for the Abraxians. The materials, um, the layout was made for smaller, carbon-based, er, life-forms. Probably smaller humanoids, er, shorter than humans? Um."

Chakotay came to her rescue. "We determined that the original inhabitants of this planet were an industrial society that had not yet achieved space travel or world unification. At some point several hundred years ago, the arrival of the Abraxians precipitated a world-changing event, culminating with the extinction of the race."

"How," demanded Janeway.

"It isn't clear," he responded carefully. "We've been able to process some of their records, though most have been badly damaged by time. There are references to demons from the sky in various artworks. There is also evidence of severe geologic activity, including mass flooding events."

"Likely caused by a new moon inserting itself above the planet and dropping millions of inhabitants onto the planet below," said Janeway, her blue eyes a veil of steel.

"We, um, we did a planetary, um, planetary resource analysis. Given, the composition and size of the aliens, um, it's probable that the Abraxians made several hundred thousand of themselves from the silicon in the planet. And, um,"

"And we did a long-rage mineralogical analysis of several hundred planets with a three hundred lightyear range. Many of them have also been stripped of their silicon. None of them currently show signs of advanced organic life, though some have evidence of past civilizations," concluded Soohoo. Her compatriot's hesitant speech was only making things worse.

Janeway had heard enough. "Tell me why we didn't discover this earlier? I wouldn't have invited planetary invaders onboard Voyager, nor helped them strip-mine another planet, if I had known."

"That would be my fault," intervened Chakotay. "We didn't send down a large enough team to adequately survey the planet. The structural analyses and predictions took far longer than usual, in part due to the paucity of written information. Let me assure you that we used every resource available to reach our conclusions in a timely fashion."

Janeway looked at her crewmen witheringly, then beckoned Chakotay and strode out of the room, ordering the computer, "Inform Lieutenant Tuvok that I want the Abraxians brought to my ready room immediately. Get the senior staff. We have a problem."

The two ensigns both sat down at their consoles. Golwat buried her face in her stubby blue hands and seemed near tears. "We've screwed up. We're going to be in the brig. I'm never going to see a starfield again."

"Stop it," said Soohoo, smothering her own distraught thoughts in a layer of righteous rage. She gestured with a ruddy, yellow-toned arm. "Didn't you do your job? Didn't I do mine? We can't be held responsible for not being able to push the computers any faster than they already are. It's not fair."

"No, it's not," said Golwat, wilting onto the table. "But we don't have a choice. I wish-"

"It's pointless to wish. We just keep working, okay? Keep busy. We'll finish up the shift and worry about it in the morning."

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

The conference room vibrated with stress as Janeway circled the three Abraxians. Nearby, Tuvok and Chakotay held themselves against the door while B'Elanna and Paris sat as far away from the captain as possible. Although she stood several inches shorter than the silicate aliens, her rage made her seem almost at their height. With the grace of a lion settling around her prey, finally stood in front of Plavan and gave her indictment in a low, cold voice.

"You murdered the inhabitants of that planet and of untold other worlds. Explain to me why I should not turn around and blast your moon into a million shards of glass."

"We must continue. We have no other way to reproduce or to exist except through minerals," replied the alien. "To destroy that moon is to destroy us."

Arkat also spoke, in the tone that they had come to recognize as apologetic. "We do not wish non-existence on the carbons. But when the moon enters their orbit, their planet experiences geological events that cause the carbons to be damaged. By the time we are awake, the carbons are non-existent. It is..." He grappled for a word, but couldn't make one that the translator understood.

Janeway rocked back on her heels and walked towards the window, as if gathering inspiration from the blurring stars beside her. However, she did not respond. The conference room sat still until Harry Kim walked in and gingerly handed a padd to the captain before almost sprinting away towards the far wall. She reviewed it, seemed unsurprised, and tossed the padd onto the table. She continued looking out the window, her face slack with controlled anger.

"It is interesting that for all of your linguistic anomalies, your ability to lie is intact," she said, enunciating every word with a hint of bitterness. "There are three other planets within ten light years of here that would be suitable, yet you have chosen the Regat star system. You could try to convince me that the route to that system is more safe, but we both know you would be lying."

She turned and crossed the room in three livid steps. "It's the only system with carbon-based life. Sentient life." From the end of the table, B'Elanna's hardened expression shifted to one of rage. A low Klingon growl barely escaped from her lips, enough to earn a warning glance from both Chakotay and Tuvok.

The captain continued. "A simple, agricultural race, at least for now. But in several hundred years, they will be industrial, capable of building machinery and tools, preferably rockets. That is what you need. You can't work the surface of a planet yourself. You can't even build your own technology." She circled them once more.

"You are parasites of the worst kind. You choose people who are not advanced enough to fight back. You devastate their world to weaken them. Then you descend from the skies, eliminate the populace, and ravage their world. Whatever technology you can salvage becomes the instrument of your next flight. And you have made us unwitting pawns to this genocide. So tell me, what do you suggest we do about it?"

The Abraxians were predictably unmoved and made no effort to answer. The room lapsed into an uncomfortable silence with all eyes on Janeway, who had taken up a wide-set stance in front of the aliens. Tuvok eventually rendered his opinion.

"The Prime Directive clearly states that we cannot interfere with regional matters, even when there may be an extinction event. Destroying the moon is an unacceptable course of action, as is attempting to warn a non-warp society about an upcoming disaster several hundred years in their future."

"We should beam down our guests and destroy the rocket we reattached," suggested Lieutenant Torres. She had once been manipulated into perpetuating a war through her engineering expertise. She would not be party to a genocide under similar conditions. "That would certainly satisfy the Federation's damn Directive, right? It would be like we were never here."

"That would sentence three million sentient beings to a slow decay in space," replied Chakotay. "I share your sentiment, Lieutenant, but the Prime Directive-"

"Does not apply to the Borg," interjected Seven of Nine, who up until this point had been barely involved in the matters on the moon. "The Abraxians closely resemble the Borg, except that their assimilation of materials and technology does not include organic life. It is inefficient," she criticized, then returned to her initial thought. "If the Borg were to approach this prewarp society and attempt to assimilate it, would you intervene, at the expense of three million drones?"

Janeway disliked the question, that much was clear from her face. She often considered the young woman's opinions too honest and too black-and-white for her tastes. However, the comparison held more weight that she would have preferred.

Softly, she mulled over her science officer's words. "How many civilizations have we sped by that the Borg eventually took for themselves? How many more will fall once we return home? We cannot let ourselves become the protectors of the Delta Quadrant. That is precisely what the Prime Directive aims to prevent. The Federation, and by extension Voyager, cannot pretend that it has the moral authority to direct the future of the galaxy."

"And yet," intoned Dravix, "here you are. This is who we are. We cannot be any other way. You aided our people. You brought us to space. Would you condemn us all to dust?"

Her temper flared again, but she did not respond to him. Instead, she told Ensign Kim to continue his scans of the approaching planet, then dismissed the entire room. She took another lap around the room, gathering her thoughts and spreading out her completely unsuitable array of options. She leaned towards B'Elanna's opinion, but the idea of an entire race starving and collapsing in the vacuum of space was too nightmarish for her to stomach. These weren't a violent people or a hostile people. As far as she could tell, this was the only way they could survive. At the same time, decreeing that an equal-sized society would be wiped out in global catastrophe was just as repulsive. Eventually, she took to gripping the edges of the window and bending her head towards the transparent bulkhead, willing an answer to come.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

"We are doomed. So, so, doomed," Alice Soohoo moaned, spinning with unprofessional vigor in the anteroom of proteomics. She tilted back the chair and let her gleaming black hair stream across the seat back, taking her frustrations out on the melted armrests with her fingernails. Her shift had ended a few minutes ago and she had fled from everyone associated with the debacle in exobiology. Instead of sympathy, she received an urgent, "Shhh!" from the main lab bench.

Within the forcefield, Lauren was carefully assembling a microtransceiver within the incubation chamber, steadying her hands as she manipulated the fine, hair-width wires into place. In theory, this would allow the grown bioneural gel to indirectly teach new cell culture without needing a physical interface. So far, however, she'd succeeded only in dropping and shattering the delicate crystal housing when her finger slipped, followed by crushing a second chip when she pressed it with too much vigor into its casing. This was why she always brought duplicates, she thought glumly, then chased away any doubts into her focused concentration.

Mileena was pressed against the closed bioneural console, trying not to breathe. If she could shut off her heartbeat to minimize her friend's distraction, she would gladly do it. It had taken so many trades and promises to get the chips made. Having Lauren here was going to cost her four shifts of engineering scutwork, but once this was built, she'd have so much more time on her hands. At least an extra hour a day to work. Or, she reconsidered, sleep. She gripped the sides of the bench and clutched them to relieve her tension.

Desperately silent minutes later, the three women exhaled. "Okay, that's it," concluded Lauren. "Want to start it up and give it a shot?"

"Yes, please," beamed Mileena, ushering her friend through the forcefield before engaging the security protocols and locking herself in.

Lauren pulled out another chair and threw a fond arm around the science crewman. There wasn't a person on the ship who wasn't keenly aware of the tremendous quandary facing the Captain. There was some blame directed at exobiology, but the average ensign knew that the chronically-understaffed science department was working at its limit. So the glances exchanged in the mess hall were sympathetic rather than accusatory. Ensign Powell was no exception.

"Ali, you're not doomed, if only because reprimanding you two would drop the number of functional exobiologists to a nice round zero. And you guys aren't nearly so incompetent that none of you is better than some of you."

The Korean woman let out a tortured sigh and lolled her head onto her friend's shoulder, allowing her wide-set eyes to drift close as she opened her mouth for a retort. Her reply was hindered by the long hiss of pain emanating from the inner lab. Mileena had engaged the physical connections, including the neural stimulators, but the analgesics had obviously not yet kicked in.

"Mileena, have I ever told you how goddamn creepy that is," ventured Alice, disguising her concern for her friend's safety under a veneer of mocking.

"At. Least. Fifty. Times," she gasped. Lauren shielded her gaze from the sight of her impaled friend, failing to ignore the tears that ran out from underneath the three-dimensional goggles. She waited for the inevitable exhalation of relief before lobbing her criticism.

"All these years and you still don't apply a numbing solution to your skin. I swear you enjoy the pain," she snarled without conviction.

"You'd be correct, Lauren, but the main reason is that I can't tell if things are wrong if I can't feel everything. Pain is a signal and a blessing. I agree, though. I'd like to have an interface that I don't need to stab myself with."

A half hour passed while her friends settled down outside, making assorted small talk about who the Delaney sisters were supposedly bedding this week. There was another series of bets being placed about whether Harry Kim would make good with Megan or whether he'd settle for fruitlessly lusting after the well-endowed Borg in astrometrics. Alice prodded Lauren about the handful of suitors she'd been trying to cultivate, but met only stonewalling, which she took to mean that things were proceeding smoothly. However, their banter was a shallow cover for their uneasy spectacle.

They both hated watching Mileena work, even though they had helped her develop and craft the interface. She'd been better at moderation when she first started using the console. She'd even take a day or two between direct inputs to let the skin heal up, contenting herself with just typing and whining about how slow it was. But over the past few weeks, something had driven her into overdrive. In the twenty-odd days, they'd both seen her covered in third degree burns or wandering the ship, exhausted from yet another all-nighter. They privately conferred about approaching the commander or even the captain to stop the experiments, but that would probably kill Mileena as much as it saved her. So, they sat by and let her destroy herself. At least she wouldn't be alone.

The proteomics' scientist was oblivious to their worries as she navigated around the bioneural interface. She established a visual and tactile connection to the new chip and activated it with a thought. The incubation chamber blazed with dazzling light and chirped a few mechanical beeps before being shut down. The other ensigns gave a murmur of approval, which Mileena returned more vocally.

"Oh, it's wonderful, Lauren. I'll be able to do so much more. Thank you. I bet you have to run out, though." Her voice was happy, but slightly distant, as it tended to be when she was working with the machine for an extended period of time.

"I'm going to grab food while I don't need to see anyone and then fall apart in my quarters." Ensign Soohoo plopped Powell's hand back into her lap and rose. "I owe you some time for the box, right?"

"Don't worry about it," said Mileena. A few seconds passed and then she spoke again. "You let me...sleep. It's okay. If I get the computer faster, it..." She stopped talking and Alice knew it was time to leave. She used her own codes to deactivate the front door and stepped away, leaving Lauren alone with her friend.

"Mileena, do you want me to put some cells into the chamber? You'll be able to run more tests if they're growing," she said hopefully.

"Can you get in," whispered the younger woman. "I-"

"I know how to bypass the forcefields without putting you in danger. Do you have some protocultures ready?"

"Y-" Her voice trailed away. Lauren knew she wasn't going to get any more useful conversation until Mileena disengaged.

The chestnut-haired ensign let herself into the inner body of the lab and, as she'd been trained, prepared the cell cultures with the appropriate growth factors and a smelly protein broth. She even remembered to put labels on this time, which she knew would please Mileena once she had returned to the world of flesh. One by one, she slipped them into the growth chamber and locked the gasket into place. A small sound came from the corner and Lauren knew she had done well.

She checked the time. She'd be missed from the transporter if she didn't leave soon. Against her better judgment, she placed her hands on her friend's shoulders. If Mileena noticed, she gave no indication. Her eyes wandered the console and noted with dismay that blood was already oozing from the contact points. The Doctor's instructions to let the skin heal for another few days went predictably unheeded. Lauren bent low and touched her forehead against the mass of dark curls.

"I hate this, Mileena. I hate watching you torture yourself. You deserve more than skewering yourself for a few milliseconds on a holographic simulation," she whispered.

"I give myself to my crewmates and my ship, Lauren," was the surprisingly lucid reply, though it was barely audible over the dull hum of the machinery.

"I...can't just...keep standing here...while you bleed," stammered the younger woman. She felt Mileena change her posture, brushing her hair against her cheek in the closest approximation of a reassuring pat she could muster while being impaled on a machine.

"I know you can't. Thank you, Lauren, for caring enough to let me do this. I wish..." and her consciousness slipped back into her work.

Ensign Powell let herself linger a few more moments before sealing Mileena into the lab and walking with barely concealed emotions back to her post. The next time, she swore to herself. The next time she saw Mileena driving herself into the ground, she'd go to the commander. If she said it enough times, maybe she'd believe it.

When the black-haired scientist finished her work, she took a moment to parse what little she remembered of the conversation. With dismay, she couldn't recall very much, which meant that she'd yet again shifted some amount of consciousness into the machinery. It never happened to anyone else, though she suspected her extended periods at the console had given her an unusual link. She'd run it by Seven of Nine should the woman deign to approach her lab. Even more distressing than the memory loss, though, was the sense that she had driven an irrevocable emotional wedge between herself and her closest friend. It hurt more than her hands.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Janeway adjusted her prosthesis, a series of flanged lumps across her forehead, and stepped onto the transporter pad in front of a grim-faced Ensign Powell. She had exchanged her captain's uniform for a brilliantly-hued dress of shimmering yellow and blue, surrounded by a golden tasseled wrap that extended from a comb atop her long red hair. Beside her stood an uncomfortably-shifting Tuvok, whose ears were concealed behind a similarly-golden turban and whose garb mirrored his captain's in both its impracticality and coloration. He carried a box made to look like carved ivory,

"How do we look," asked the captain without merriment.

"Approximately like the people on the surface," replied Chakotay, revealing no emotion. He, of course, though the entire costume was ridiculously fantastic. He'd hoped he could come along for the trip, but the Captain insisted that he monitor the goings on from the ship, presumably to give directions based on the ever-growing bevy of data from the planet below. They'd been in orbit for two days, enough time for Harry and Chakotay to assess the culture and comportment of this tiny civilization without being able to get a full team on the ground.

"Let's hope it's close enough to get this done. Energize."

The two figures beamed away in a series of blue triangles and Chakotay relaxed into a grin. "Well, I'm a little sad that I can't play dress-up with the Captain today," he said with a head tilt. He patted the transported console and turned towards the operator. His face went slack again.

"Are you alright, Ensign Powell? You don't seem yourself."

She dropped her gaze and he watched her compose her thoughts. "Permission to speak freely, sir."

"Of course. What seems to be the problem?"

"At what point does service to the ship become something to be concerned about," she said, cautiously.

He considered all the times the crew had sacrificed time, energy, and rest for their missions. He thought especially of his captain, who had to be instructed by the Doctor on pain of reprimand to sleep, eat, and relax. There was one notable incident of her being prescribed a holodeck trip, though that had ended with a psychic attack by hostile aliens. Compared to her, the entire crew looked positively lazy. He squelched that last thought.

"It's not an easy question, Ensign. I think it depends on the person. Obviously, if someone has pushed themselves to the point of being non-functional, that isn't desirable. I know that's not the answer you're looking for, though, and that you have someone in mind." He looked at her with sympathy. There was a sudden bond they shared, caring for someone who was expressly terrible at caring for themselves.

She averted her eyes. "Thank you, sir," she said, terminating the conversation abruptly. "I'm sorry to have bothered you."

"No bother at all. Please, if you're worried, come to me. Neelix may be our morale officer, but I'm the one who can enforce time off." He tried to make her crack a smile, but failed. He turned to go, hoping that his retreating form would prompt more conversation. It worked.

"Commander, one...one last thing before you leave," she said, not looking up at him. "The next time you call Mi-Ensign Irae to your office, have her roll up her sleeves."

Chakotay dropped his head and closed his dark eyes for a moment, letting the door open and shut before him. "I will do that," he replied. As he walked to the bridge, he paged the Doctor.

"Hello Commander Chakotay. What service may I render today?"

Chakotay rolled his eyes. "Can you divulge the medical records of a crewmember to me?"

"Over an open comm link," said the hologram, slightly miffed. "That would be exceptionally unprofessional. And, before you give me alternative means of communication, the answer is no, not unless I believed that the crewmember was a threat to himself or others."

"Is there anyone on the crew whom you put into that category?"

"The captain, obviously. If this were 20th century Earth, she wouldn't be allowed to drive a car, let alone a Starship, without more sleep and nourishment. Besides that, however, there is no one I can recommend."

"Very well. Chakotay out." He reached the bridge and settled down into the Captain's chair, hoping that her foray onto the surface was going productively. He pushed his eventual confrontation with the proteomics-based ensign out of his mind. More important things were at hand.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

The beam-down site was a spacious drawing room draped with gauzy silks and bejeweled tapestries. Oil lamps flickered merrily behind panels of stained glass that depicted huntsmen at their sport, ladies bathing, and beasts laying in the fields. The divans were of an ornate carved wood that gave off a heady, perfumed scent as they walked past. The ambiance was outrageously opulent, though Janeway had expected no less when she chose to speak to the Lord of this land.

A greyish-skinned man with four perfect spheres under his skin glanced in the room and startled. Peering in through the crystal-framed doors, he fixed a puzzled gaze on his unexpected guests.

"I beg your pardon. How did you get in here? Is the Lord expecting you?"

"I believe he is," answered Janeway smoothly. "We are from the Northernmarch and sent word ahead to your Lord of our arrival." She inclined her head and gave the tiniest bow, which ruffled the layers of her garment with a delicate swish. "I am Elkatarine of Voy'Agare. This is my manservent, Utvek." The Vulcan bent low at the waist and stiffly rose back to his full height.

The servant adjusted his black brocade jacket and ran his hands down his slacks to smooth out the creases, clearly nervous. How these visitors had gotten into the castle was unclear, especially given the regiment of the Lord's soldiers scurrying through the parapets and marching across the courtyard. They were dressed as nobles, though assassins and thieves could easily procure glittering clothing to fool the guards. If his Lord were to learn of this lapse in security, it would be beheadings for all of them. He adjusted his yellow necktie and swallowed hard at the thought. Perhaps they had arranged for an audience and he had not heard of it? That seemed the most palatable solution.

"Ah, yes. Of course. Please, this way."

The trio tapped lightly through the arching marble hall. Janeway allowed her eyes to wander over the stunning portraiture and artful carvings that nearly cluttered the walls. She felt as if she'd gone back to the Renaissance and was to have an audience with an ancient European monarch. She reminded herself that the kings of old had not treated those from the fair Emerald Isle so well; perhaps this reagent would be more receptive.

The cherry-colored doors stood fastened with a bronzed metal lock. A pair of armored halberdiers stationed on either side crossed their weapons as the group approached and one gave a coarse shout for them to hold. The trembling, dark-clad man said something to them, at which point they let him through before resuming their blockade.

"I shall let the Lord know of your coming." The servant disappeared into the room, which was hidden from view by a second set of doors and another set of fabrics. Clearly, the ruler enjoyed his mystery.

Janeway closed her eyes and hoped that the exobiology crew had made the proper arrangements. They'd set up this meeting via an interesting subterfuge involving a few bribed guards and multiple skeins of replicated wine. In theory, she and Tuvok were ambassadors from the little-known continent across the choppy Northern sea. Chakotay had been advised that the man behind these doors had the largest land holdings and the most powerful military of any on this part of the continent. His reputation was as a shrewd leader and cunning general, though that was as much as exobiology could cobble together in a few hours. He seemed to be the best target for their plan, which is why the captain now stood, dressed like a circus clown, in front of his chambers.

The doors opened once again and the remaining two humanoids were urged inside by the snarling guards. Much to Janeway's surprise, they entered a small, dimly-lit room. Unlike the rest of the manor, it was drab and sparsely furnished. The ceilings were low, the floors scuffed, and the paint chipping at the edges. Save a dull brown flat-paneled door on the far side, the room was bare-walled.

In the middle of the chamber, a burly man sat on an uncarved wood chair, flanked by a slim young man and a red-skinned young woman. He leaned his tree trunk-sized forearms on a flat table and watched the trio enter from green eyes underneath a gnarled brown beard that was streaked with grey. Janeway felt a twinge of apprehension. Perhaps they had been misled about the nature of the man sitting before them. He looked more like a barbarian than a nobleman, especially given the rest of his dwelling.

Silence blanketed the room. The captain reviewed protocols from a hundred different races, most of which assumed that one did not speak to royalty until spoken to. However, as the minutes went by, she felt herself getting tense. Something was tremendously amiss. The communicator beneath her dress was on and functioning, but she was loathe to use it and disrupt their entire plan. Why hadn't exobiology figured out how this culture handled introductions?

"It would appear, Lord, that you have been the subject of multiple assassination attempts. It is a logical choice to meet strangers within this room," said Tuvok.

Janeway shot him a glance. This was not the appropriate introduction under any circumstance with which she was familiar. Tuvok's reasoning was, of course, sound; the room left nowhere for an assassin to hide or for a device to be planted without being immediately located by the inhabitants.

"Indeed," answered the broad-chested man.

"Let me assure you that our purpose here is to give you tribute and aid, if you will have it."

"And I may, my dark-skinned friend," said the man, turning his head to look at the trio.

"I have been told that you are from the Northernmarch. We see few of your kind in our lands. Be welcomed to the Castle of Barvok." He gestured to the two people beside him. "My son, the future regent."

"I welcome you, Northern strangers," said the boy with practiced aplomb. The young man was dressed much like the servant, clad in dark trousers and a black brocade jacket. Across his chest lay crossed bands of woven metal that threw their reflection across the ceiling.

"My master assassin, the Lady Quel." The red-skinned woman in her simple white shift nodded her head graciously towards the group. Janeway felt a shiver run up her spine and began to notice the sweat beading on the underside of her thickly-layered gown. Where did the woman conceal her daggers?

"Lord Barvok," continued Tuvok. "I am known as Utvek, master of arms. This is Elkatarine, the Duchess of Voy'Agare.

The Lord said nothing, but his son openly mused, "It is rare that a woman speak freely in front of a king. Her type are best suited for kitchen work and quiet killing. It upsets the natural order of things." The captain let herself blink a few times. She was aware that most agricultural people oppressed their women, but she was hard pressed to recall a history book that recounted a caste of female cutthroats.

"That is true even in our lands. However, she is exceptional among our people. We follow her without question." Janeway suppressed a smile of pleasure.

"Well spoken, Master Utvek," said the white-clad woman in a bare, accented whisper. "True loyalty is a gift." She gave Tuvok a meaningful expression, which he ignored.

"Very well," said the king. "I will hear your words, Duchess."

"My Lord," Janeway began. "My people were beset by vile monstrosities from the upper reaches of the Rippling Mountains. They were men of scaled stone who resisted our arrows and broke our swords. Our weapons were insufficient and our methods primitive against their attacks."

"Troubling," interjected the king. "The prowess of Northernmarch warriors is well-sung at our festivals. That you struggled with these outsiders gives testament to their strength."

"My Lord is observant," said Janeway with a bow. "Eventually, my soldiers repulsed them, but at great loss of men and resources. Too many of my people have died; we will not last the winter."

"Is this an entreaty for help? For I am sorely grieved to tell you that the lands of Barvok cannot spare aid," began the prince, but his father cut him off.

"Let the woman finish, boy," he said, clapping the metal adornments so that they shifted and clinked. The young man flushed with annoyance, but ceased talking.

"We do not ask for help. Rather, we have brought a creature to you so that you may learn to defeat it. My servants have one captured and will bring it to the location of your choosing."

"A skilled challenge for my soldiers," cried the King with delight. "I gratefully accept your gift, Duchess. Send it to the slave pits beneath the castle. We will sing the tale of the stone men throughout the ages!"

Which is exactly what I'm hoping, said the Captain to herself. A racial memory of the Abraxians.

"There is something more," intoned Tuvok. He carefully placed the box on the table, slowly enough that the assassin could easily intercept it should she perceive a threat.

"Another gift from our Northern friends? Truly we are blessed this day," said the king. His tone was more hesitant. He reached a massive arm out to touch it and was turned aside by the crimson-skinned woman.

"Allow me," she whispered, and ran her fingers across the carvings, expertly searching for a hidden needle or concealed mechanism. Finding none, she handed it to her liege. "It seems safe, my Lord. Let my blood be spilled if it is not."

"What is it," he asked, turning the object over in his hands, shaking it once or twice before putting it down.

"My seer had a dream, a terrible portent," said Janeway dramatically. "She saw a third moon in orbit around our planet. It covered the sky with storms of fire and brought the waves up to shatter the earth. We all despaired of its meaning. But then the gods gave her a strange omen."

"That was," asked the prince eagerly.

"A massive tusked beast, pure white with blood-red eyes, wandered into our city and was slain immediately by our warriors. That night, the seer had another dream. When she awoke, the hand of the gods guided her in carving this box and the trinkets within." Janeway was having tremendous fun, especially given the enraptured audience before her. It had a purpose, though.

"As we left to come to your lands, she gave us the box and told us to give it to you. Her message was very strange" Janeway forced herself to look mystical and faraway. "The sons and grandsons of Lord Barvok may fail to open the box. But when the grandsons of his grandsons walk upon the earth, the box will open and the moon will be stopped." Janeway finished with a flourish and looked at the trio.

"What does it mean, father," said the boy, trying to pry the ivory lid off to remove the contents.

"I do not know," he admitted. He pulled the box back and banged it on the table a few times. It made an unpleasant clattering, but stayed sealed.

"Neither do we," added Tuvok. "However, it has been brought to you. It may be that generations will pass before there is a solution. We ask only that you keep it for your descendents."

"I will," said the Lord solemnly. "Is there anything I can do for you, my newfound Northern friends?"

Janeway smiled sadly. "We wish only for your people to survive by learning from our suffering. We must now return and prepare to bury our kin."

The duo bowed low and were escorted from the room. Once they were out of sight of the servants, Janeway tapped her concealed communicator and ordered them to be beamed out. She gratefully took in the sight of the transporter room and its apparently grumpy attendant before turning to Tuvok.

"Well, I hope this works," she said, removing a layer of her costume. "The writers of the Prime Directive are probably howling in their graves."

"That is unlikely," corrected Tuvok, "Especially since several of the writers are still alive. However, they may not have been too upset at your unorthodox solution."

"I can't take the credit for it," she said, escorting him into the rest of the ship. "Exobiology came up with the boxes."

"Inscribed with calculus and a simple circuit, ensuring that only a sufficiently advanced race would be able to interpret it." Tuvok was impressed, as much as a Vulcan could be. Within the box was a description of the moon-vessel's contents and trajectory. Assuming that the culture developed at the same speed as humanity, they might have enough technology to alter the moon's course or, if nothing else, resist most of the Abraxian invasion. It was all they could do.

Janeway sighed. They'd only have a little time to rest before repeating this whole charade for the other major powers on the planet. Even if one dynasty fell, another might last long enough to solve the riddle of the box and save the planet. She wished she had a better solution, but satisfying both her moral compass and the Prime Directive was almost never possible. Before she returned, there was one final matter regarding the Abraxians that she needed to attend to.

She strode, still dressed in her gown, into the brig. The Abraxians shuffled around their cell, but otherwise did not acknowledge her presence. She stood before them, hands on her brightly-colored hips, and pronounced her sentence.

"You will not be left to starve on an empty rock, as I promised, but you will not go unpunished. You will be beamed to the surface, where you will be hunted by your prey. Perhaps you will escape and feed off the land. Perhaps your kin will come and despoil this planet. Perhaps the carbons below will repel you. It is no longer in your control."

"You have no right," said Plavan, vibrating her scales together in what was obvious anger. "Your Prime Directive-"

"Is hardly being violated. This is a matter of local warfare. We will not interfere any longer."

With that, she whirled around and departed for the transporter room, where Tuvok stood with yet another box. Before they dematerialized, she asked him, "So, how are you enjoying your acting?"

"I find it much less pleasant when I am unable to sing," he replied, cocking one eyebrow with what a human might define as humor.

Her response was cut off by the glimmering transporter.

/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\/¯\

Captain's Log, Stardate 51446.02: We have left orbit around the planet after depositing the Abraxians on the surface. I can only hope that the inhabitants are able to interpret our warnings before it is too late. At times like this, the Prime Directive feels more like a burden than a guide.

Captain Janeway circled Deck 8 for the third time. She's been briskly walking the halls, burning off nervous energy while most of the crew was asleep for gamma shift. The steady thrum of the warp engines and the dim lights did little to soothe her, nor did she feel any less awake than when she left her quarters. She'd completed the third mission to the surface to convey her final cryptic message to a medieval-era king, yet she felt no sense of accomplishment or pride. Either solution would result in partial or total genocide and the Prime Directive was hardly fulfilled. She'd lain in her bed for almost an hour, persistently turning the problem over in her head as the ship sped away from her ability to solve it further. When sleep failed to come, she'd thrown back on her uniform and stalked the ship in search of fatigue or solutions.

She took the turbolift up a level and began another lap, but stopped in a few paces to find an increasingly-familiar blue-clad ensign in front of a bulkhead. Mileena bent in front of an open panel, using a microadjuster on the plasma conduit within. A series of whirs and beeps emanated from her position, followed by a whispered swear and a flash of an orange warning light. One pale brown hand rubbed the space between her eyes and her face fell into quiet contemplation. She stood up, set the tool on a ledge, and allowed herself a luxurious stretch, arching herself back to work out the kinks, which is when she caught the eye of her captain.

"Good morning Captain," Ensign Irae said warily, straightening up. "May I help you?"

"As you were, Ensign," said Janeway with a smile. "I didn't know that Engineering was so short on staff that they're borrowing from proteomics."

"Hardly," said Ensign Irae, sneaking a small grin onto her face before she bent back to work on the adjustments, "but William...Doyle, that is, was in my lab for a few hours trying to decrease transmission latency on the console interface. This is my way of repaying him."

"By cleaning the EPS conduits for him? I think he might have gotten the better end of the deal," replied the captain. It was a task usually reserved for crewmen whose actions were one punch short of being thrown in the brig

Another series of hurried beeps came from the panel before the ensign had a chance to answer. She heaved a sigh and breathed heavily through her nose. "My work survives on the good graces of other departments. If that means that I need to try to fix a .004% power drain in this bulkhead, then so be it. Though I would really like it if I could figure out why it won't accept my input."

Janeway walked a little closer. She looked at the young woman carefully. The dark circles under her eyes were almost black. Her uniform had lost its expected crispness and drooped unbecomingly around her hunched shoulders. The tops of her hands were visibly and strangely thinner than when Janeway had seen her last. These cues were simple for the captain to notice, if only because Tuvok and Chakotay had pointed to them on her own body on more than one occasion.

"Ensign, how many consecutive shifts have you worked? And please, be truthful. Digging through duty logs is not anyone's idea of an enjoyable task," said the Captain, being careful her warning with what she hoped was a modicum of caring.

The ensign stood up again and fixed the captain with her slightly-bloodshot pale yellow eyes, calculating her time awake, which was never a good sign. "I think...close to eleven. I only worked half of yesterday's beta shift, though. Got a nap from 1800 to 2000 hours. And I, er, gave myself a three hour break during alpha shift two days ago." She broke off her explanation and winced at the captain. "I'm guessing this is not the information you were aiming for."

"Not particularly, no." Janeway tried to muster a patented laser-like stare, but her heart wasn't in it. She managed a disapproving head shake.

"Though," she added, trying not to dig herself in farther, "I didn't work more than 48 consecutive hours. The Doctor won't have to revive me in sickbay again."

"I am impressed with your restraint," said the captain dryly. "Ensign, I must remind you that the quality of one's work declines greatly after more than 36 hours, which is evident right now." She reached out and delicately removed the tool from the ensign's hand, flipping it around and pressing it back into her grasp. "This device works better when the functional end is being pressed against the conduit rather than being waved around in its general vicinity."

With a snort, the young woman bowed her head, defeated. "I'm sorry, Captain. I just owe favors to so many people. They've all hel-"

"We're going to deal with your staffing needs at another time, Ensign. In the meantime, get some sleep. Captain's orders. In fact, take the next 24 hours off. If I find that you've been so much as thinking about your lab, I'll have you confined to quarters."

The ensign jaw dropped and her eyes lit up with fear, instead of the expected relief. She gripped the probe in a desperate, slightly trembling hand. "I have ten cell cultures that need my attention in fewer than six hours. They need a buffer swap. The-The connections need to be disrupted and...I can't...it will take another week to-"

The captain instinctively reached out to grip the girl's shoulder, steadying her. "It's alright. I won't make you ruin your work. Who else can help you?"

The comforting seemed to utterly fail. "Lauren...but it's in the middle of her shift and she's been assigned to help rebuild part of transporter room three. Alice...no, she's still sorting data. I don't know," she said frantically. "I...please Captain, I promise to go to sleep right after."

To Janeway's surprise, tears began forming at the edges of the girl's eyes and threatened to stream down her rapidly paling bronze-gold face. She resisted the urge to tenderly wipe them away with her thumb and then suppressed that thought altogether.

"Ensi-Mileena, it's okay," she said in a reassuring voice. Her hand squeezed the girl's shoulder a little. "I'll do it. I know my way around a biology lab. What do you need done?"

"I-Captain, are you..."

"Don't debate your captain," she commanded as gently as she could, "especially when she's trying to help you. How long do you think it will take?"

"L-less than an hour. I think I set up the materials before I left today. The protocol is in log 264. I...think you can access them without my clearance." Her mood seemed to settle as she talked.

Janeway pursed her lips and did not inform the ensign just how many hours of logs that the captain had been enjoying in her free time. Instead, she let go of the now-composed ensign with, who gestured towards the open grid.

"I don't suppose you're also interested in adjusting the flow through the conduit," she said with forced humor.

"Well, if you won't tell Lieutenant Torres about a 0.004% power loss, I won't," replied the captain with an appropriately wry grin.

The ensign clicked the panel shut, tucked the tool into one of her pockets and leaned against the bulkhead heavily. A flush came to her ashen cheeks. "I'm sorry, Captain. I never get emotional like that. I'm so embarrassed." She smeared the moisture away from her eyes and flung it away in disgust. "Crying. In front of my captain. Over cells? I really do need a break."

"Exhaustion often drives us to emotional extremes, myself included, which is why I heartily recommend adequate rest. Now, do I need to escort you to your quarters to make sure you don't accidentally get lost and find yourself in your lab?"

The words came out of Janeway's mouth before she could catch them. She clenched her teeth against the side of her mouth. Maybe she also needed sleep, since she'd just used an incredibly weak pick-up line without meaning to. Or at least, not consciously.

The ensign politely disregarded its potential intent. That or she was so out of it that she didn't hear most of the words.

"Yes, I'll head right home," she mumbled. "It's just around the corner." The fatigue was catching up with her very quickly now that she'd been allowed to stop working. She began down the corridor and Janeway began walking a step behind her. Just to keep her from falling over, right Kathryn? said that persistent inner voice.

A few turns later, they stood in front of the ensign's door. With some difficulty, she tapped herself in and, giving no heed to the captain, strolled through, letting the doors swish shut in front of a very startled Janeway. Two seconds later, the ensign's door opened again and Mileena's horrified expression almost made the captain burst into laughter.

"I forgot you were there. I'm so-" She gripped the door frame with two white-knuckled hands, her tiredness gone with the realization of giving her captain an incredibly impolite brush-off.

"Good night, Ensign," said Janeway with bemusement. "We'll work on door etiquette another time."

"Good night, Captain." The young woman retreated into the room, emitting a strangled cry of embarrassment that snuck out just as the door shut. The captain let herself break into a wide smile and finished her trot around Deck 7. Then, as promised, she made her way to proteomics and completed the protocol. It was simple work, but satisfying in its own way. She had not done hands-on research like this since well before they left the alpha quadrant. She clicked the cell cultures into place and reinitialized all the redundant security measures. One less thing for the ensign to worry about.

She returned to her own quarters, undressed hastily, and lay back down. Now, she dared contemplate her new fondness for the girl. The young woman had a way of breaking through Kathryn's usual reticence in being close to the crew. They shared so many traits: dedication, a scientific mind, the ability to self-sacrifice. It would be natural for Kathryn to try and mentor the young officer. Yet for some reason, the feelings she applied to Seven and to Kes, when she was still aboard, were not quite working here. There was something else, something darkly appealing, in the way the young woman comported herself. Something that made her hesitate before letting go of her shoulder.

It was probably nothing, reflected Kathryn. Just her isolation kicking in again. With that in mind, she started up the desired log and set a computer reminder to go to the lab. Disappointing the girl would be one of the worst things she could do today. Sleep came shortly thereafter.

Epilogue:

Mileena Irae fell face-first onto her pillow. She'd had just enough energy to fumble through her evening routine and slide on a robe before the fatigue crumpled her. Even mortification of breaking down in front of the captain, and then slamming the door in her face, was insufficient to stave off the wave of tiredness that engulfed her.

As her brain shut down, she grasped a few last thoughts. "Wait, did the captain just proposition me? No, she would never do that. Wishful thinking, Mileena. She'd never have you."