CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX




Mara and Anakin were rather impressed when, over a week after Commodore
Shimazaki had left to discuss their offer with his superior officers, he
was now returning with a group of ten senior Admirals and the Federation
President himself.

"I'm sure you want to know what our answer is," the President said after
introductions had been made all around the room.

Mara simply nodded. "Of course."

"The Federation Senate was very divided at first," the President
supplied. "There were many arguments on both sides, but cooler heads
prevailed and I am pleased to say that we accept your offer." He
extended his right hand.

She took his hand and shook it, breathing a sigh of relief. She had been
half afraid, after talking to C'baoth about how the negotiations had
gone earlier, that they would try to change the terms and be stuck in
negotiations for days if not weeks on end.

"I'm glad to hear that," she finally said. "Have you picked a
representative yet?"

"That was one of the points of contention after we had made our initial
decision, and since Starfleet represents our collective interests
without prejudice, we concluded it would be best served by a Starfleet
officer. As such, I am appointing Commodore Shimazaki here, given his
excellent diplomatic skills, to be our representative. Commodore, do you
accept this?"

Shimazaki's mouth simply hung agape. He was certainly expecting that one
of the senior Federation politicians would be appointed, or at the very
least one of the senior Admirals. "Uh," he hesitated for a moment, "Yes,
Mr. President, I do."

"Now," Mara said, "there is one more option that I need to discuss with
you. As part of becoming a Republic member, it is important for members
of both of our navies to familiarize themselves with the different
technologies. Therefore, the Navy has a crew exchange program in place
which will allow selected members of your Starfleet to serve on Republic
Navy vessels for a standard tour of duty, and the same for Republic Navy
crew to serve on your vessels. Is this offer agreeable?"

One of the admirals, Vice-Admiral Edward Jellico, spoke up. "Actually,
we were about to ask you the same thing. We already have a number of
crew selected that we would like to have go with you."

Mara smiled. "Perfect. I've been told by our engineers that they've
finished the modifications to the Outbound Flight and it should be ready
to leave in the next two days."

"In that case," Jellico replied, "we'll make the necessary arrangements
and transfers today, and should have everyone ready to leave tomorrow."

As Mara, Anakin, and the other Admirals left, Jellico clapped Shimazaki
on the back. "Great work, Kaz," he finally said. "You know, this could
be the start of great things to come. Don't let me down now, I've put
way too much time into getting you where you are."

"You have my word," Shimazaki replied.


* * *



"Any news?"

Jacen looked up to see his sister walk into the room in the Dubrillion
military hospital. He immediately jumped up to give her a hug. "She's
still in a coma," he finally said, gesturing to Tenel Ka's bed, where
she was hooked up to life support equipment. "They managed to make an
antidote for the venom, but they told me they're not sure how far the
extent of the damage is. Apparently it's not only a biotoxin but also
functions as a neurotoxin, so they're worried it may have caused brain
damage. I guess I was lucky I didn't get more of it on Belkadan."

"That's horrible," Jaina said, reaching up to touch her eyepatch at the
memory. "How's her arm?"

Jacen sat down and shook his head. "She's going to kill me when she
wakes up, I just know it," he said. "Even though it was in stasis, the
poison killed everything so effectively that the flesh just pulled right
off the bone, as if it had been cooked, when they went to analyze it.
The smell, too... the smell was unbearable. They told me the only option
is prosthetics. I told them to wait, since I remembered her reaction the
last time someone tried to put prosthetics on her."

"What was that?"

"Well, you remember at the Academy, when her lightsaber failed and I
chopped her arm clean off?"

"Yes?"
"Ta'a Chume tried to force her to get a prosthetic arm installed. As
soon as it made contact, she just freaked out and sent the arm flying."

"But what good is a Jedi without any arms?" Jaina protested.

Jacen snorted softly. "Tell me about it. I would just rather let her
make her own decision this time. The last thing I want to have is her
ready to strangle me."

Jaina put her hand on her brother's shoulder. "Jacen, look, at least you
made the right choice. If you hadn't done what you did, she wouldn't
even be alive right now. I'm sure she'll see that as more important than
the fact you had to amputate her only good arm."

"I hope you're right," Jacen finally admitted, leaning back and resting
his head against the wall. "So, I haven't seen you in a while. You never
told me what happened on Jorrkona."

Jaina took a seat across the room and stretched. "Well, I guess I didn't
tell you, but Lowie and I have been working at cleaning up the mess left
over from the battle, ever since the Navy showed up and chased the
invaders off."

"By the way," Jacen said, "I finally found out what they call themselves."

"Really?"

"They're the Yuuzhan Vong," he said. "And apparently surrender is
against their mindset."

"Well, I expected that much at least from our run-in with Yomin Carr,"
Jaina admitted. "Anyway, when we reached Jorrkona everything was very
calm, but once we were in the middle of loading the transports the, uh,
Vong arrived. We took pretty heavy casualties. I organized some of the
local militia to hold them off while we tried to finish loading as many
as possible."

"The same thing happened to us on our second trip from Dantooine," Jacen
said. "But there wasn't any local militia so Tenel Ka and I were the
only ones to hold them off."

Jaina shook her head. "It was a slaughter. Sure, we got a few, but they
attacked with so much force it just overwhelmed us. We finally cut our
losses and retreated, only to run into some warships in orbit. I think
they followed us here, which is why you ran into the middle of the battle."

"So I take it the /Lady Luck/ survived?"

"Yes," Jaina replied. "We took pretty heavy fire in it though. The hull
plating is still scarred and pitted from all the molten rocks and plasma."

Jacen nodded. "Same here. So, are Mom and Dad still here?"

"Yes, and pretty badly shaken up, too. Lowie and I are going to go with
them after we finish the cleanup and testify before the Senate. Sometime
after that we're all planning on meeting up on Kashyyyk for Chewie's
funeral. If Tenel Ka recovers by then, you should come too."

"I'm planning on it," Jacen said. They sat in silence for several
minutes before Jaina got up. "Hey, would you mind coming with me for a
while?"

Jacen looked across the room to where Tenel Ka lay, her unconscious form
slowly rising and falling with every breath. The nurses had undone her
braids and her hair, slightly kinked and messy, was was pulled back
behind her head to keep it away from her arms. A feeding tube ran into
her mouth, and fluids were dripping through IVs into her. She just
looked peaceful, and Jacen didn't want to leave her in case she woke up...

Seeing the hesitation in his eyes, his sister took his hand. "Jacen,
it's only for a few minutes. The doctors here are good, they can watch
her in the meantime. It's just that we captured some of the Vong biotech
and I want to show it to you, since you've always had a touch for that
sort of thing."

He let out a heavy sigh, looking back at Tenel Ka's peaceful face,
framed by her red locks that hung down over her ears. Jaina gave him
another tug, and finally he turned. "OK, let's go, but make it quick."


A short walk and drive later, they were at a nondescript warehouse
building that was surrounded by armed troops. When they saw Jaina, they
opened ranks to let them pass inside.

"I think this is probably the best of the finds," Jaina said, obviously
excited as she pointed to one of the enemy fighters, its cockpit
shattered but otherwise intact. Test instruments were set up all around
it but the technicians seemed frustrated.

"Of course you'd think that, you're a fighter pilot," Jacen joked as
they walked up to the strange fighter. It was more aerodynamic than
Jacen had realized, its texture only appearing rough from a distance but
in actuality it was just a trick of the light and a property of whatever
material it was made from, since the surface was actually almost
polished smooth.

Jaina pointed at a hood that rested in the middle of the cockpit.
"Apparently they used that to control it, I'm not sure how.

"There's one way to find out," Jacen said, jumping up onto the fighter
and looking inside the cockpit. It seemed to be made to normal humanoid
dimensions, so he climbed in and picked up the hood.

"Wait!" Jaina shouted. "How do you know it's safe?"

Jacen shrugged. "They wore it, didn't they?"

As he held the hood, he could feel it seeming to pulsate with life. With
some hesitation, he raised it up and slipped it over his head and
heard... voices. It was hard for him to describe them, it sounded like
whispering heard miles away underwater. Whatever language they were
speaking sounded remarkably like what he had heard the troops on
Dantooine speaking.

Struggling to concentrate because of the voices, Jacen tried to reach
out to the fighter and find some way to communicate with it. After a few
false starts, he finally had a feel for what the fighter was thinking—it
was /hungry/, he realized, but he had no idea what it ate. He considered
the environment that the fighters operated in, the cold depths of space...

"Jaina," he said, pulling the hood off, "it's telling me it's hungry. I
think it wants to eat rocks and maybe some ice."

"If it wants to eat," Jaina said, walking around the fighter, "where's
its mouth?" She momentarily ducked out of sight, and he heard her shout
out "Found it!" from somewhere he couldn't see.

He climbed carefully out of the cramped cockpit and down the side,
looking underneath when he reached the ground. Jaina was lying on the
ground, pointing to a spot roughly in the middle of the craft.

"Can you find me a rock?" she asked.

Jacen walked outside and grabbed the first rock he saw, which was about
the size of his fist. Then he returned and handed it to Jaina, getting
down on his hands and knees to see under the fighter.

She took the rock and held it up to the opening in the fighter's bottom.
There was a slight crunching noise and it grabbed the rock from Jaina,
crushing it and letting small pieces of gravel fall to the ground.

He walked over to one of the guards. "Where can I get some ice around here?"

The guard turned to point to a place behind him. "Through those doors,
next building, go to the cafeteria."

"Thanks." Jacen ran off, returning with a heavy bag of ice several
minutes later. He handed it to Jaina, who fed it into the fighter. In
the meantime, Jacen went outside again and picked up another bunch of
large rocks, lugging them back to Jaina and handing them to her one at a
time. When she was done feeding it, she climbed back out from underneath
and looked at him expectantly.

"What?" he asked.

"After all that, aren't you going to find out if it's still hungry?"

"Oh." He shrugged and climbed back up the ladder to the top of the
fighter. "I'll go check." He again squeezed himself into the cockpit and
put the hood on, trying once again to get a feel for the fighter's
bizarre biology...

"Get back," he finally said to Jaina. "I think I've figured out how to
control this thing."

Silently, without the usual whine of generators that most repulsorcraft
produced, the fighter rose up into the air about a half meter. All the
instruments near the fighter suddenly went wild with alarms, and about a
dozen technicians ran into the hangar.

"...the hell?" one of them exclaimed. "Hey, what are you guys doing?"

"It's a living fighter," Jaina explained. "If you don't feed it, it
won't do anything!"

"Huh," he said. "Well, that makes sense." He walked over and started to
check the instruments. "It's distorting gravity almost like a repulsor,
but it's much more focused. Is there anything else you can do?"

Jaina pointed to the cockpit. "My brother Jacen is flying, you should
ask him."

Before the technician could say anything, the fighter settled back down
onto its stands and Jacen pulled the hood off. "That was...
disorienting," he said as he climbed out, trying not to fall off the
fighter. "Jaina, you give it a try. It's not too hard, just listen and
try sending your thoughts to it. I need to get back to the hospital."

"But you've come so much farther than anyone has with this thing..." she
protested.

"It doesn't matter!" he shouted. "I don't know why I listened to you.
Tenel Ka's in the hospital because of me. I'm not leaving her again
until she's able to stand on her own two feet. You could feel what was
going on while I was in the cockpit, I'm sure you can figure this damned
thing out if you put your mind to it."

Her eyes widened at the sudden outburst. "Kriff, Jacen, calm down. You'd
been sitting in that hospital for a week and I thought you needed to get
out, that this fighter would be something to at least take your mind off
her for a while."

"Yes, it did that," Jacen admitted. "But that's the problem, she's been
in a coma since Dantooine and we need to find a way to get her out of
it. I can't do that if I'm trying to figure out how Yuuzhan Vong
fighters work."

Without any further words, he turned and walked out, leaving Jaina alone
with the technicians and MPs.




* * *




Kathryn Janeway looked at the rope in front of her with a detached,
analytical gaze. It had been a month and a half since she had been
relieved of command of /Voyager/ by Starfleet. After that news, she had
moved back to her native Bloomington, Indiana, into a small farmhouse
about a mile from her family's long-time homestead.

Since then, she had heard nothing from Starfleet, not that she had
expected anything after the dressing-down they had given her. Her
family's track record in space was less than exemplary, too. Her father,
Vice-Admiral Edward Len Janeway, had become trapped under an ice cap
while on an expedition on Tau Ceti Prime and drowned. Her 20^th century
ancestor and sometime role model, Shannon O'Donnell, she had once
believed to be a successful NASA astronaut. Later she had found out from
Seven of Nine that Shannon had never made it into space, that instead
she had been an engineer who hadn't even been able to work at NASA.

She sighed; she hadn't been any better than them. She had been the only
Captain in Starfleet who had managed to get her ship lost in the Delta
Quadrant. She had missed numerous opportunities to get her crew home in
the interest of gathering scientific data, ignoring the fact that it
would all be in vain unless they could return to Earth. Then, when a
real opportunity to get home appeared, she had freaked out at the
concept of human telepaths and blindly refused to deal with them. Her
crew had relieved her of command and gotten /Voyager /home, without her
help.

The worst part of it was, after having explored the stars, she just
couldn't live with a grounded career.

It was with that sentiment that she lifted the noose, which she had
attached to a sturdy overhead beam in the farmhouse, and placed it over
her head. She let out her breath, and was about to kick the chair out
from under herself when there was the ground-shaking rumble of a sonic
boom, followed by the familiar whining sound of a shuttle landing.

Janeway paused, her analytical mind shifting into high gear. First,
since this was rural Indiana, Starfleet shuttles didn't land here very
often. Second, the nearest house was her mother's at about three miles
away, meaning that whoever it was from Starfleet had come here
specifically for her.

She quickly took the noose off, reaching up and frantically untying the
knot that secured it to the beam. A knock on the door startled her as
she stretched to reach the rope above the beam, and she slipped off the
chair, crashing awkwardly on the floor. Her head hit and that was the
last thing she remembered.


An indeterminate amount of time later, she came to in a sickbay. As she
lifted her head to look around, she realized that she had no idea where
she was. Other than herself, the bay was deserted, and there were no
clues aside from the styling to tell her where it was located.

"Ah, Captain, I see you're doing better."

She turned her head to see the new arrival. "... Captain Jellico?" she
asked, slightly confused. She remembered his face, but his uniform was
that of an... "I'm sorry, Admiral, I didn't realize you had been promoted."

"You've been out of the loop for some time now, so I can excuse the
lapse in protocol," Jellico replied, his face becoming more serious. "I
hope you weren't really intending on hanging yourself?"

Had Janeway been standing, she would have hung her head. As it was, she
turned to look away from the Admiral. "It's hard, losing your command
like that. I felt like I had nowhere to go, and after being out there,
there just wasn't anything interesting about being on the ground anymore."

"I can understand that," Jellico said. "Which is why I'm here. Now,
let's get you off that bed, we have a lot of things to talk about on the
way."

Janeway slowly sat up to avoid having all the blood run from her head
instantly, then swung her legs out and came to her feet. Jellico was
already out, marching down the corridor at a brisk pace.

"I have a shuttle waiting," he explained as they stepped into a turbolift.


Several minutes later, as they came out to the shuttlebay, Janeway
noticed one of the signs. "You brought me to Utopia Planitia?" she
finally asked.

"Of course. No sense in wasting time, is there?"

They boarded the shuttle and sat down across from each other. Janeway,
still slightly uneasy, spoke up. "Am I getting Voyager back?"

"Unfortunately, no," Jellico replied. "She'll be here for refitting for
at least another six months. That ship took one hell of a beating. I'm
surprised they didn't just decide to scrap it altogether."

Janeway stood up to look out the forward viewport. "If I'm not getting
Voyager back, then why am I here?"

"You'll see in just a moment," Jellico said. "We're almost there."

The shuttle swept past a number of docked Nebula and Galaxy classes,
most of which had large sections of their hull plating removed as small
"worker bees" welded new pieces of spaceframe into place. "Is this all
from the Dominion?"

He pursed his lips and nodded. "We have over two hundred ships in here
right now for refitting because of the damage they took trying to retake
Deep Space Nine – and these were the ones that survived. In fact, we're
having trouble getting enough duranium alloy to repair them. There's a
backlog and we think we'll only be able to complete maybe a dozen within
the next month. What's worse is that more keep coming in all the time."

"That doesn't sound very good," Janeway remarked. "Also, you said
/trying/ to retake Deep Space Nine? I thought we still had control of it."

"No, we don't, and the situation is not very good," Jellico admitted.
"Brass decided that we would need to launch a counterattack to prevent
the Cardassians from disabling the wormhole minefield. I argued for a
surprise strike with what we had available, to preserve the element of
surprise, but I was overridden and we waited until we had what Starfleet
felt was an overwhelming force.

Jellico took a deep breath as he turned to look back out the window.
"Trouble is, by then the Cardies had disabled the minefield, and when we
showed up, a massive Dominion fleet popped out of the wormhole and the
whole situation just went to hell. I ordered the destruction of Deep
Space 9 to prevent the Cardies and Dominion from fortifying it again,
but most of their fleet is still here in the Alpha Quadrant and they've
been gathering strength while using hit and fade attacks as far as
Betazed to keep us from doing the same. Starfleet, naturally, blamed me
for their logistical failure and stuck me here." He let out a heavy
sigh, as if the weight of the world had been dumped on his shoulders. It
was at that point that Janeway realized just how many more lines had
appeared on his face since the last time she had seen him. "As they say,
when life gives you lemons, make lemonade..."

"I'll say. Have we had any luck finding their homeworld?"

Jellico shook his head. "No. The /Defiant/ ran a number of missions deep
into their territory before we mined the wormhole but all they turned up
were outposts and minor installations. The Cardassians weren't very good
at providing information either, right up until they were annexed by the
Dominion. As a matter of fact, about four years ago a joint
Romulan-Cardassian fleet was wiped out when they ran into an ambush at
what they thought was the Dominion homeworld."

"I heard about that one," Janeway commented. She noticed that the
shuttle had begun to slow, and she looked out the viewport again. She
gasped slightly as she saw what the drydock held.

"The /Prometheus?/"

"The one and only," Jellico replied.

She now had a clear view of the ship. It was surrounded by construction
framework and many of the hull plates were missing, but the shape was
instantly obvious. "You know, I never did understand why its
registration number was so low," she finally said.

"NX-59650 was reserved almost two decade ago for a technology
demonstrator of the Prometheus project," Jellico replied. "The only
problem was, there were two competing designs. One was a straightforward
starship with advanced features. The other was the one that finally got
built, but its keel wasn't laid until ten years after the number was
reserved. The multi-vector assault mode took far too long to come up
with a workable implementation."

"So what's happening to it now?"

"We've removed its multi-vector capability," Jellico replied "That mode
was only useful against individual targets, and with the fleet actions
against the Dominion it made no sense – it was really designed to combat
a new Romulan or Klingon threat that hasn't, nor is it likely now, to
appear."

"But we rescued this ship from the Romulans not even a year ago,"
Janeway protested. "How are they not a threat?"

"We've negotiated some new treaties with them due to the Dominion war.
They recognize the fact that the Dominion poses a greater threat to
everyone and have agreed to fight at our side should the Dominion launch
a full assault on this quadrant."

Janeway nodded. "That makes sense. But what about the Borg?"

"The Borg adapt so quickly that attacking from many sides at once would
be an exercise in futility, if you would pardon my pun. We've already
tried attacking a Borg ship with a number of normal ships at Wolf 359
and I think you know what happened there."

The shuttle came to a stop in the /Prometheus's/ bay, and Jellico came
to his feet and gestured for her to exit. "After you."

As she walked down the rear ramp, she turned to look at him. "So what
exactly are you doing to it?"

"We've removed all of the central armor, phaser banks, and latching
mechanisms, since that was only wasting space. I personally like the
redundant power systems so we're leaving it with four compact warp
cores." He pushed the call button for the turbolift. "I'll stop first in
Engineering, I think you'll appreciate this the most."

The turbolift ride was very brief and soon they were in engineering.
Janeway's mouth dropped open as soon as the doors opened.

"You... didn't..." she finally said as she contemplated the glowing
sphere that sat in its own area in front of one of the warp cores.

Jellico smiled. "Yes, it's a quantum slipstream drive. We weren't really
sure what to do with this ship after refitting it, and the Daystrom
Institute needed a ship more sophisticated than Voyager to test the
technologies you brought back. So we chose this ship and they've been
modifying it for the past several weeks. They don't expect to have it
operational for another month, however." What Jellico didn't have the
heart to tell her was that the systems reintegration had scrambled
everything so much that Starfleet had given up hope of using her as a
ship of the line and instead had just handed her to the Daystrom
Institute to figure out.

Janeway, still dumbfounded, walked around the slipstream drive core as
the Daystrom Institute technicians watched.

"Starfleet wasn't sure who to pick as captain, since nobody's ever used
one of these before. It just seemed to me that you were the obvious
choice, given that you have been the only Starfleet captain to have used
a slipstream drive." He let his remark hang in the air for nearly a
minute before continuing. "Of course, that does depend on your mental
stability. The business with the noose aside, there were some rather
disturbing reports from the examining psychologists on your return from
the Delta Quadrant. There is no way that Starfleet will ever let you
command again without being certified stable by a psychologist. I'm sure
you don't find the possibility of life inside a padded cell on New
Zealand appealing."

Janeway shook her head. "Of course not, who would? I understand that
I've made my share of mistakes by now. I've learned from those mistakes
and I'm ready to do whatever is expected of me by Starfleet."

"Good," Jellico said as he turned to the doors. "After you. Speaking of
Starfleet, I believe you have an appointment with Command..."