Flashback - Diane Carey [1]
"Thank you." Tuvok realized his response was cool and rote, and immediately also realized that emotional beings required more sustenance for their empathy if it were to be nurtured. "Your enthusiasm for our hopes is most appreciated, Mr. Neelix. Of course, if we ever find a way home and you come with us, that will mean that you will then be seventy years at high warp away from your own people."
"Mr. Vulcan," Neelix said as they left the mess hall, "you are my people now. Let's go see what the captain wants, shall we? Do you think it will be something wonderful?"
CHAPTER
2
VOYAGER.
Of all ship's names, in all the oceans of the populated planets in the galaxy, of all fleets in all spacefaring, had there ever been a name so fitted to the vessel bearing it?
Kathryn Janeway had heard the name in her own mind and from her own lips so often that the sounds were part of her, living inside her clothing, as much within her as she was within the ship, and as dependent upon her as she was upon the vessel itself. She and it were symbiotic, islands nourishing each other, with no other land in sight.
And her crew's voyage was a long one, showing little hope of growing shorter. Thrown across the galaxy by some form of scientific magic, they were
seventy years from home space. And that was at full warp.
Continually waylayed by searches for energy, for food, for ways to survive, and by the quirks of strange territory burgeoning with its own life, both mild and threatening, their journey grew longer and longer by the day.
Janeway settled back in her command chair and tried not to think about this, but that never worked. Now she was thinking about it even more. She'd made a vow to keep and pursue the Federation edict for Starfleet personnel-"to go boldly where no one had gone before, to seek out new life and new civilizations . . ."
But every time she did that, giving her crew a short-term goal with a chance for challenge and satisfaction, she set back their long-term goal of just getting home.
That was her dilemma. Let them grow old heading home as fast as possible, without challenge or mission, or give them the missions and the challenges and let them have some form of a life here, in the Delta Quadrant, with their goal of home just a backdrop from which she hoped they could be distracted?
She was on her own personal voyage that way . . . could she captain their lives as well as their duties?
Oh, well.
She tapped her chair's comm panel and forced herself back to business.
"Captain's log, stardate 50126.4. Long-range sensors have detected a gaseous anomaly that contains
sirillium, a highly combustible and versatile energy source. We've altered course to investigate."
The last word echoed again and again. Every time they stopped to "investigate" something, they shaved a little more off their chances of reaching home before dying of old age.
But they had to get halfway there before they could get all the way there. Before the next seventy years would come the next five.
That was what she was looking at on the forward screen-an energy source for the next five years.
First Officer Chakotay moved aside as Janeway left her command chair and moved to join her department heads, who were clustered around a couple of monitors.
"Sirillium," Neelix uttered in his modified court-jester tone. Neelix was their resident resident of the Delta Quadrant. Native to this space, no one on board had tried harder to plunge into the daily life of the foreign ship's crew than he had. The crew didn't even take as active an interest in themselves as he took in them and their well-being. Sometimes he was the best thermometer of how they were doing, physically and mentally.
"Yes," Janeway responded. "And possibly large amounts of sirillium at that. If so, we're going to need to stockpile as much as we can. I'd like to convert Storage Bay Three into a containment chamber."
Neelix turned the banded pastel colors of his plumed