Star Trek: Voyager: Endgame

Stand down your hostile action or we will open fire.”
    “Harry! A little early, too. Very nice.” Janeway leaned into the controls and increased speed to get the shuttle out of the way as the starship swooped back into firing range.
    The shuttle was cracking in half. She could feel it losing its grip, hissing atmosphere into space, grinding against its own bones as the systems tried to keep their bloodlines going.
    In her periphery as she fought to keep her shuttle together, she saw the
Rhode Island
plunge into the scene and bite at the heels of both Klingon ships without breaking a sweat. The two ships split formation and raced into wide evasive maneuvers, but didn't leave the area.
    “Stand by for transport, Admiral,”
Harry's voice ordered.
    Janeway glanced at the comm monitor—yes, there he was.
    “You know where I'm going, Harry, and it's not to your ship.”
    “Your structural integrity is failing.”
    “Just get these Klingons off my tail.”
    The starship instantly veered out of transporter range and blasted fiercely at one of the Klingons, effectively disabling the baddies with a bitter strafe. As the Klingon went streaming off on a crooked trail,
Rhode Island
roared after the second while Janeway coaxed her shuttle to hold together and still find the power to charge the deflector. Now she could afford to pay attention to what she was doing and forget about Korath and associates.
    “Computer, activate the tachyon pulse and direct it to these spatial and temporal coordinates.”
    Temporal coordinates—dangerous words.
    Space began to stretch and blur before her. From over her head, a wide-angle pulse shot out from the deflector and created a cut in space, a broad wound in the universe.
    Janeway aimed her shuttle, damage and cracks and all, toward that crack and leaned on the impulse speed until there was no going back, until not even the braking thrusters could veer her off her course.
    Above her head the temporal deflector hummed and pulsed its beacon into the wound, black on blacker. The great mouth of space opened and gulped her down.



CHAPTER 8

    Starship Voyager
    The Delta Quadrant
    Twenty-six years earlier
    S OMETIMES HE DREAMED OF DRIVING THE SHIP . T HE IDEA THAT anybody else could do it the way the ship liked . . . surge up on those solar winds and skid down the weak side . . . read the spectral shifts and avoid the rough spots . . . it wasn't what people thought. Still, he wished the ship had a yoke or a wheel, the real thing, to let him feel the movements through his hands the way he could in the holograms of early flight—you could really
lean
into a plane in those days, or a motorcycle or a bike—so why couldn't a starship have a joystick?
    “Tom.”
    Of course, nobody else knew about the skid traction trick. He'd invented that himself, and never told anybody. Okay, so it was a little egotistical, even rotten. Didn't hurt anything. Everybody had their little tricks, ways to do their own jobs that made them look better than anybody else. There—solar flares from a blue giant. The best kind!
    “Tom.”
    “I'm 'sleep.”
    “It's time.”
    “Mmmm . . . for what?”
    “I'll give you one guess.”
    Were the lights on? Why would she put the lights on in the middle of off-watch?
    Tom Paris's eyes popped open as his brain crawled out of the navigation dream and suddenly hit high speed. He almost fell off the bed—almost right out of his T-shirt.
    Beside him, B'Elanna was sitting up in bed as best she could, her eyes serious and wide as she contemplated her once-svelte body, looking very much as if she'd swallowed a pumpkin.
    Paris felt his back muscles scream as he jolted up and slapped his chest, looking for his combadge. “Paris to—Paris to—”
    Where was it? On the nightstand!
    “Paris to sickbay! It's time!”
    Over the system the Doctor's voice was annoyingly arid.
“Remain calm, Mr. Paris. Can she stand?”
    “Uh—I—uh—” He found his feet and turned to ask her, but she was already up and putting on her robe. Extra-large.
    “Affirmative,” Paris said into the combadge.
    “Then I suggest you report to sickbay.”
    “What about B'Elanna?”
    “Her too.”
    She was already heading for the door as he dragged his own robe off the floor. “Maybe we should use the transporter—wait for me!”
    B'Elanna was taking small shuffling steps, but moving right along at a quick enough pace that Paris had to step lively to keep up.
    “Don't you think we