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His scientific brain raged against what he beheld, but he shoved the complete impossibility of it all aside. He had a chance to save Sekaya, and it didn’t matter one damn bit if he understood how.

He touched his combadge.

The away team’s experience had taken on the quality of a nightmare. Firing at the creatures who kept charging, slogging through mud, turning shoulders to the winds, and pushing steadily forward. And forward to where? The storms continued to wreak havoc with their sensors. At one point Paris waved to Kaylar, and she nodded, understanding his command. She turned and began to lead them to the settlement.

All of a sudden, as if someone had touched a control pad, the brutal storms stopped.

Tom removed his helmet just in time to see the clouds turn from blackish gray to white and fluffy, and then zip away altogether. A bright, cheerful sun now beamed down on them from a blue sky.

“What just happened?” Niemann said, voicing the question everyone was thinking. The rest of them began to remove their helmets.

And then Tom was suddenly hit with a very strong sensation that everything was going to be all right. It was as if someone had touched his brain and said so in as many words. He knew it in his bones, knew past all logic and understanding. The joy that washed through him was so powerful he stumbled. Grinning like an idiot, he looked around at his team.

“It’s going to be okay,” he said as they stared at him. “Everything is going to be fine.”

At that moment his combadge chirped.

“Kaz to Voyager and any away teams. Requesting emergency medical beam out now.”

Kim met them in sickbay. “What happened? Are they okay?”

Kaz threw him a brief glance. “I don’t know and I can’t talk. Out of my sickbay now.”

Kim seemed a bit taken aback, but Paris nodded. “Come on, Harry,” he said. “Let’s give the doctors some room.”

As they went to the bridge, Tom filled Harry in. “I didn’t get a lot out of Kaz, he wants to operate immediately, of course. But I did get a few things. You remember that hologram of a Cardassian scientist the Doc created when B’Elanna was attached to that thing?”

“The mass murderer?”

“Crell Moset. The Butcher of Bajor, they called him,” Tom affirmed. “Turns out he was working with the Changeling. Kaz didn’t give me all the details, but once we learn everything, it’s going to be a hell of a story.”

“Wow,” said Kim. “But I notice that you haven’t come back with a shape-shifter.”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “He was able to escape. Had a cloaked ship and apparently made it out just in time—his own creations were hard on his heels, Kaz said.”

“That’s too bad,” Harry said. “He’s not someone I want running around loose in this quadrant.”

“Well, at least he’s not our problem anymore. Moset escaped as well—I guess they left together. Kaz said there are some people still in stasis down there. I’ll take a team and get them back.”

“What about the colonists?”

“We’re to beam them up and hold them until the think tank can figure out how to change them back.”

“You think they can?”

Tom shrugged. “They’ve got Seven and the Doctor working on it. What do you think?”

For the first time in a long while, Harry Kim laughed.

Kaz was glad that they were gone, not just because he certainly didn’t need any distractions right now, but because he wasn’t sure he wanted them to see what he saw.

“Computer, activate EMH,” he snapped as he ran his hands under sanitizing light and gathered his tools.

“Please state the nature of the medical emergency,” said the slim, elegant holodoctor.

“Check him out, then assist me in surgery,” Kaz told him. The hologram tended swiftly and efficiently to Chakotay while Kaz frantically worked on Sekaya.

It was the strangest surgery he had performed in his entire life. Sekaya seemed to be frozen in time, the damage that ought to have inevitably killed her halted so that he could repair it before the body could react. He thought he’d have one hell of a paper to present on the power of mind over body when this was all done.

He didn’t know how long…whatever was happening