Star Trek: Voyager: Endgame

monitoring the changes on his private readouts, with each segment of the ship flashing from red to green as the crew mustered from their quarters or the mess hall and systems were manned and locked down. “ Uh-oh . . . B'Elanna requests permission to report to engineering.”
    Janeway glanced at him. “Denied. She's to report to sickbay.”
    “And you want
me
to tell her?”
    “I'll tell her, if you're not up to the challenge.”
    “Something tells me we'd rather have you alive. Maybe I'll have the Doctor tell her.”
    “Good idea.”
    She fell to an uneasy silence. She had to keep her mouth shut now. Sometimes the captain's job was to let everyone else do theirs. They needed time to get settled, countercheck and secure all ship's systems, make sure the shields were stable and the ship was battened down for the storm of storms. Luckily, unlike in a battle situation, she had the time to give.
    While she waited, she communed with the nebula. Nebulas were one of the most unpredictable of natural phenomena. They had no patterns of action, and almost no similarities that could be counted upon. Each one was unique, and even once you were inside the currents couldn't necessarily be plotted, considering thousands of individual storms working upon each other at conflicting pressure levels. They were in for a ride.
    “Captain, we're secure for turbulence,” Chakotay reported, sounding eminently pleased with how well they were doing despite their lack of a chief engineer.
    As Paris turned the starship toward the murky mass, the overwhelming size of the nebula began to make itself known. It was greater than any sea. They could barely read the width of it, never mind the height from their vantage point about a third of the way down the body of the obstruction.
    “Maybe Chell should add Nebula Soup to his menu,” Paris commented when the first shocks of electrical disruption washed across the primary hull and pressed the nacelles downward.
    The second jolt was harder. Janeway grabbed the rail. “Shields?”
    “Holding,” Tuvok responded.
    “Bridge to astrometrics.”
    “Astrometrics. Seven.”
    “Any more data on those neutrino emissions?”
    “Negative, Captain. I still can't get a clear scan.”
    “Distance to the center?”
    “Six million kilometers.”
    The ship no longer jolted, but now began to shake with a bone-deep vibration that didn't stop. Rather it increased with every kilometer.
    “What is it?” she asked.
    Tuvok answered, “I'm detecting a tritanium signature, bearing three-four-two mark five.”
    “Whatever it is,” Paris added, “it's close.”
    Tritanium . . . certainly wasn't anything naturally created in this maelstrom that now kicked them from side to side.
    “Evasive maneuvers,” she ordered by way of precaution. This wasn't the time or place for a collision.
    Paris already had a pattern plotted and slid the ship into a new angle of entry. The vibration began to subside.
    “Was it a ship?” Chakotay asked.
    “Possibly.” Tuvok kept working.
    Janeway's instincts wouldn't turn down the alarms in her head. The ship seemed to be moving smoothly, but tritanium . . .
why
would there be tritanium?
    The main screen was a fuming yellow-green cauldron now, red-veined and flashing, with no points of reference, no way to judge visually the distance between clumps of active gas and the poisoned expanses pressing them apart. Even the experienced eye could make no dependable judgments. Everything would be a guess—instinct.
    “Another tritanium signature!” Kim shouted. “Right on top of us!”
    The captain parted her lips to give an order, to change the angle of entry again in favor of their strongest shields, when the ship suddenly boomed again with vibration, ten times worse!
    On the main screen, the murk parted and with stunning clarity a gargantuan Borg cube cut through the mustardy cloud, on a dead-ahead collision course with
Voyager!



CHAPTER 10

    “T OM !”
    Janeway never even had the chance to choose a direction for evasive actions. She blurted the single cry to Paris, lost in the roar of engines and vibration, but the ship was already moving. A good helmsman wouldn't hit something just because he didn't have an order not to.
    The ship veered sharply down and to starboard, missing the icebreaker prow of one of the cube's corners. A Borg cube! What were they doing here? Why hadn't the ship's systems recognized the—
    When the pressure in her head changed, she shouted, “Get