I would like to state that I'm a Christian and I have spent time as a young earth creationist, old earth creationist, theistic evolutionist, unwilling atheist, to again believing parts of the Bible (the seven critically accepted works of Paul which led me back to Christian theism), to again believing every word of the Bible (I don't expect the events that led me to this conclusion to be convincing to anyone else unless the same thing happens to them). This is a Trek fic, so I'm using the understanding of deep time and evolution as accepted by mainstream science.

-2378 Voth City Ship_

Forra Gegen was nervous to say the least. The last time he had been summoned before the Ministry of Elders, he had been reassigned to metallurgy. His decision to retract his Distant Origin Theory of Voth origins had been the most disappointing moment in his life. Of course, the alternative would have been to condemn the crew of Voyager and himself to a penal colony.

He did not know what could bring what the elders could want with him now. All the Ministry's usual members were there. In the center sat Minister Odala. Gegan knew that he'd convinced her of the truth, but that she had simply not liked it. For the Voth Empire to justify its rulership over vast swathes of the Delta Quadrant they had to maintain the fiction that their species was the first to evolve sentience in this region of space. The idea that they had evolved in the Alpha Quadrant meant that they were immigrants, homeless—weak in her view.

"Do you know why you have been summoned here, Professor Gegen?"

Of course not. He had an undistinguished career in micro-mettalurgy.

"None, Your Honors. I'm confused as to why I am here."

"Have you been keeping up with current events?"

The only major news lately was the sudden disappearance of the Borg. The Borg Unicomplex, which housed the Queen had and was in a manner of speaking, the collective's central nervous system, had exploded; a Borg transwarp hub inside a nebula at the edge of explored space exploded, and all active vessels throughout known space had either exploded are gone off line. The Borg were the Voth's only major enemy. Keeping up with a composite species that had the technical knowledge of thousands of worlds was difficult, but the Voth had the advantage of twenty million years of technical advancement. The Borg had only been around for ten thousand. So far, they had failed to assimilate the Voth's personal phasic cloaking device, though they had assimilated a number of Voth as drones. With the Borg gone, the Ministry of Elders were masters of all they surveyed.

"I take it that Her Honor is referring to the Borg?"

"No," Odala surprised him, "I mean your mammals."

Gegen let that sentence sink in. This was the first he'd heard of Voyager in four years. He had done what the Ministry wanted, handed over all his research on the Distant Origin theory. What did the Ministry want now?

"Our probes have confirmed that a Federation shuttle with a cloaking device was at the Borg Unicomplex for three hours before it exploded. The same vessel that we detained, USS Voyager, entered the nebula only minutes before the Borg Transwarp Hub was destroyed. I'm afraid we have a new enemy…one more dangerous than the Borg."

A new enemy? Ridiculous! Gegen believed that he knew Voyager's first officer, Chakotay, better than that. According to the human all his people wanted was to return home.

"You are our expert on these creatures. Your former occupation is to be restored to you."

Gegen stood mouth agape.

One of the male elders inclined his head in Gegen's direction.

"We are convinced by your scientific findings, but we could not accept them for political reasons. Now circumstances have changed."

Now Gegen understood perfectly why he was here.

"I won't help you. They are not our enemies."

"They aren't? I have thetestimony of your asistant Tova Veer that the crew of Voyager tortured him and performed medical experiments on him?"

Gegen paused for a minute. Could what they said have been true? He and Tova had abducted Voyager's First Officer so the humans had a right to be hostile, but he couldn't picture them ordinaraly as sadists if Chakotay was typical of the species.

"The humans want to destroy us and will succeed, unless we destroy them first. They have likely gained technology from the Borg, so we must depened upon cunning and guile."

Odala had slipped up there, Gegen noticed.

"Not all of Voyager's crew was human though."

"They were all mammals."

So? Gegen thought. Mammalian races were much more common than Saurian ones.

"And the vast majority were humans."

Gegen could not think of a comeback to that. Voyager was Federation vessel and the Federation was supposed to be comprised of 150 different spiecies, yet most of its crew was human.

Odala had been remaking on that fact citing Captain Janeway herself about the number of species in the Federation. "At least we admit we are an empire. The United Federation of Planets is nothing more than a misleading name for the Human Empire."

Gegan didn't much care what Odala was saying at this point.

"If you're new Doctrine is that humans must die, I don't want my old job back."

Odala was thinking on her feet here, Gegan could tell.

"Our new Doctrine is that humans must be subjugated. Of course we should destroy them if they pose an existential threat to us, but we are civilized. I spoke in fear earlier. But I assure you those fears have a basis in fact."

That was a step better, but not enough.

"And if humans prove to be nonthreatening in any way?"

"The evidence to date suggests otherwise."

This much was clear: Distant Origin had been accepted; brotherhood with humans had not. Gegen respectfully told the Ministry he could be of no use to them, and stormed out. Of course he knew they still had Veer.

Tova Veer had remained in the Circle of Archaeology following his mentor's disgrace. He had been notified by the Ministry of Elders that his expertise would be needed. He was quite surprised to learn of the humans' role in the destruction of the Borg. He was unsurpriesed that, in light of the new evidence, the Ministry of Elders had changed position on Distant Origin. He was also unsurprised that Professor Gegen did not want his old job back, now that humans were considered enemies. He could predict that, some time before he went to bed, his old mentor would be stopping by his quarters.

He sat at a console, rereading declassified notes that he had once written on Voyager and its crew. A chime at the door, did not break his concentration.

"Enter," he said.

As he suspected, it was Professor Gegen.

"How may I help you, Professor?"

"Veer,"he said warmly, but there was a twinge of concern in his voice.

Veer gestured for him to take a seat on the sofa while he walked to the replicator.

"Is there anything you'd like?" Veer asked.

"I'm neither hungry nor thirsty."

Veer nodded and, upon realizing that he was neither hungry or thirsty either, took a seat beside Gegen.

"Distant Origin is finaly accepted. You'd think I would be celebrating."

"With all due respect, Professor, I don't see why you're not."

"The Ministry of Elders wants to subjugate the humans."

That was the response that Veer was expecting and yet could not understand.

"If they evolved on our true homeworld and stayed, whereas we left, and they could destroy the Borg collective despite having inferior technology to our own…to leave them unconquered proves we are inferior life forms."

"But they don't seek to subjugate us," Gegen said. Then he asked Veer, "Is it true what you said, that they perfomed medical experiments on you?"

Veer's skin blushed yellow in agitation. "I did not say they conducted medical experiments on me; I said they might have!" Then Veer turned away from Gegen, ashamed. "I panicked and went into hibernation."

"They were explorers who were as curios about us as we were about them. Need I remind you, it was we who secretly boarded their vessel, not the other way around." Gegen tried to put his open palm on Veer's shoulder, but the younger Voth pushed him away.

"The fact remains, Gegen, that they stayed on Earth. They endured. They defeated the Borg. We didn't. Whether they are peaceful or not isn't the issue. The issue is how they refelect on us."

Gegen could here the Ministry of Elders and the shadow of Doctrine in Gegen's voice. They had accepted the new paradigm as truth, but still viewed themselves through the lense of the that view the humans were the survivors who stood their ground. The Voth were the cowards who fled Earth in terror. It was a view of themselves that made Voth ashamed to be Voth.

"How do they reflect on us? We have a far older culture, our brains are twenty-two precent larger…"

"And what have we done with those advantages?" Veer said. "We've done nothing! Nothing!"

"I know of no other species to reach our great age. We've survived, which is more than nothing."

Veer snarled. "Don't you understand?" He stood up angrily. "We are weak, and the humans are strong." He turned and pointed at Gegen. "The only way to make value for our selves is to reclaim our homeworld from the humans. Our entire worth as a species depends upon it."

"How would you purpose conquering an enemy that has destroyed the Borg?" Gegen asked.

"The Ministry of Elders has already ruled out a direct military atack. We are to aproach them peacefully…and secretly aproach their enemies."

Gegen shook his head. Why did the Voth always have to be this way: measuring their civilization against others and finding that they could not measure up to their own arbitrary standards unless they conquered the other civilization?

"You once supported my research. Why have you become so anti-human?"

"So that I can be pro-Voth."

Gegen scoffed, "That's the Ministry talking. Why do you want to conquer the humans?"

"Because,frankly, Professor, what they did to the Borg scares me. The probes that linked them to to the Borg's distruction indicated high levels of tachyons on this ships. That small shuttle was more advanced than anything we scaned on Voyager!"

Gegan paused for a moment, weing what Veer had just said. "Time travel?"

"Time travel," Veer said icily. "If they have technology from the future they could be a threat to the entire galaxy."

Gegen finally felt a chill settle in his bones. He could clearly see the danger such technology could present to the galaxy.

"It appears to have been designed specifically for combat with the Borg. It's not much more sophisticated than our own technology."

Gegen put his hands on his knees. A million rationalizations raced through his head. Voyager was stranded in what the humans called the Delta Quadrant. The humans of the future might have been in some conflict with the Borg, and needed Voyager for some reason…yes,yes, that was it. Still the fact that humans had such weapons troubled him. Gegen would prefer friendship to confrontation, but he would be a fool to not recognize the possible threat.

"I think I may have been hasty in declining the Ministry's proposal."

"It's not to late to approach them. We need every expert on humanity we can get."

In that, Gegan agreed with Veer completely. His personal experiences might go part of the way to teach Voth that humans were not the souless monsters as which propaganda might decide on depicting them. So far, according to Veer, the Ministry wanted learn more about the balance of power in this "Alpha Quadrant." Things might never come to war. Gegen sincerely hoped that they never would.