Star Trek: Voyager - The Neverending Night

Chapter 3

13 Sep 2021

Lieutenant Commander Tuvok stood at attention as the turbolift ushered him to his destination. The turboshaft motors, which guided the compartment along tubes that ran throughout the ship, made an oscillating hum as they applied their non-mechanical force. At times, Tuvok found the hum, along with the flashing light patterns on the walls which came and went with every deck, distracting. But recently, he found them calming. It comforted him to know that after all this time in the Delta Quadrant and in the harshest of circumstances, Voyager still performed even its most basic operations diligently.

The turbolift doors parted and Tuvok heard an unfamiliar sound: music. Was the sound coming from the computers? No. Tuvok’s highly attuned Vulcan sense of hearing could detect the subtle differences between the audio system and a real life instrument. This was the latter. Tuvok stepped out onto the bridge, and the music stopped. Ensign Kim stepped up from the Captain’s chair in the center of the room and turned around to see Tuvok. Aside from the Ensign, there was no one else on the bridge. Kim, always eager to accrue time spent in a command position, had volunteered to run the night shifts. Evidently, he was the only one on duty at the moment.

“Commander, is there something wrong?” Ensign Kim asked hurriedly.

“Relax, Ensign. I was merely attempting to clear my thoughts by checking Voyager’s status.” Tuvok assuaged.

“Oh. Well, there’s nothing new up here to report.” Kim paused for a moment. “I thought you normally meditated to clear your mind.”

“I do.” Tuvok agreed. “However, I have been finding the practice difficult as of late. The view from my quarters has been less than stellar.”

Kim chukled. “I know the feeling.”

It was only then that Tuvok noted that the instrument that Kim was holding in his hand was his clarinet. “You were in the middle of a performance.” Tuvok said “I apologize for the intrusion. I shall leave so that you may continue to play without interruption.” He turned and started back for the turbolift.

“Oh actually…” Kim said after him which made Tuvok pause. “I was just working on my concerto. I call it ‘Echoes of the Void’” Kim said while flourishing with his free hand. “I can play it for you, if you have a minute.”

“Too many, in fact.” Tuvok observed. “Please continue.”

Harry Kim sat back down in the chair while Tuvok stood behind him, watching the empty viewscreen. Kim took in a breath and then blew into the instrument. The melody of a single clarinet began to fill the room. The piece was slow and somber. It evoked a sense of plodding, perhaps a yearning even. A sense that there was once something so vital and vibrant but had now been deprived of life. Tuvok noted that Kim’s eyes were closed, allowing himself to get lost within the music. Tuvok also closed his eyes and allowed his mind to wander and relax.

Suddenly, the room began to shake. Tuvok lost his balance and had to brace himself against the hand railing. Kim quickly set aside his clarinet before vaulting over the railing toward the OPS station at the back of the bridge. Tuvok took his customary post on the opposite side at tactical. The room shuddered again, as the lights around the bridge began to flicker. Caution and warning alarms were beginning to sound as Kim and Tuvok scoured through the information displayed on their consoles.

“We’ve dropped out of warp. We’re losing power.” Kim declared.

“Switch to auxiliary.” Tuvok ordered.

Kim inputted the commands into his console. “No effect.” A new set of alarms sounded from Kim’s console. “I’m detecting a small object off the port bow, closing rapidly. It looks like a shuttle of some kind.”

As the senior tactical officer, Tuvok instantly assessed the situation as a potential attack. If the incoming vessel attempted to dock while Voyager’s shields were up, it would impact harmlessly upon them. However, if Voyager were drained of power first, the shields would be ineffective. Logically, disrupting Voyager’s power systems would be the prelude to a preemptive strike before a hostile party boarded the ship. “Shield status?” He asked.

“Shields are failing.” Kim replied.

There was another rumble in the ship and then all the lights on the bridge flickered out.

“When I said ‘change of pace’, this wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.” Kim quipped in the dark.

Tuvok, having long since memorized the layout of the bridge, navigated his way to the emergency storage locker. He opened the locker and withdrew a SIMs beacon. He activated the device after securing it to his wrist. Two bright cones of light erupted from the beacon, illuminating the now inoperable bridge. Kim walked over to Tuvok and took another beacon from the locker.

“Do you think we’ve been boarded?” Kim asked.

“Unknown. We need to restore power to the internal sensors as well as shields, otherwise the theta radiation levels will rise to lethal levels within the ship.” Tuvok said.

Kim retrieved a tricorder and emergency toolkit from the locker. The two then headed over to the primary EPS junction panel located just behind the science station. Kim opened the panel and began to assess its status.

“Looks like the main and auxiliary power systems have been knocked offline. But independent subsystems are still operational. Emergency life support is still functioning and it looks like the holodecks are still online.” Kim said.

“Can you reroute power from the hologrid?” Tuvok asked.

“I just might…” Kim trailed off as he focused his attention on the panel. It took him a few moments to complete his work. Once he did, some of the stations on the bridge sprang back to life. The pair went over to the OPS station, and Kim read aloud what he saw on the display. “As we thought, all primary systems are offline. Shields are down and theta radiation levels are rising throughout the ship.” Kim inputted a few commands, and the computer responded with several tones of acknowledgement. “Looks like there’s a hull breach on deck eleven and there’s an object in the breach which is preventing emergency force fields from being established.”

“Life signs?” Tuvok inquired.

Kim shook his head. “I can’t tell. Internal sensor resolution is at minimum.”

Tuvok went over to the bridge storage lockers once again, but this time he withdrew a hand phaser. He set it to heavy stun.

“Mr. Kim.” Tuvok said to the Ensign. “Continue to effect repairs. Prioritize shields and communications.”

“Aye sir.” Kim said in acknowledgement.

Without power, the turbolifts were inoperable. Therefore, Tuvok entered the Jefferies tube located aft of the bridge. As he climbed down the ladders and crawled through the accessways of the utility corridors, Tuvok’s mind was hard at work reasoning out the most likely plan of attack that the intruders would take. The fact that the intruders had chosen deck eleven specifically as their infiltration point, gave a clue as to what their goal was.

Deck eleven was one of the most critical areas of the ship. After being stranded in the Delta Quadrant, several cargo bays aboard Voyager were converted from mere storage spaces to long term supply facilities. Deck eleven specifically housed the Airponics Bay, which was primarily responsible for generating food that the crew used to supplement replicator usage. Aside from that however, deck eleven was also the location of main engineering. One of the most sensitive areas on the ship, main engineering housed the warp core, a matter-antimatter reactor capable of tremendous energy output. If the bridge was Voyager’s brain, being the master command and control center, main engineering was most certainly its heart, providing power and life to the entire ship. If the warp core were to be damaged, or the supply of antimatter or deuterium raided, it could render Voyager powerless. Even if it didn’t, damaging the warp core would make Voyager unable to travel at faster than light velocities. Without any planets or stars for lightyears in all directions, that would most certainly consign Voyager to a slow painful death.

As Tuvok descended the last ladder which put him on deck eleven, he could hear the distant sounds of weapons fire. He stepped off the ladder and walked to the Jeffries tube hatch which he unlatched and opened cautiously. He looked around and saw no one in the corridor with him. Tuvok stepped out of the tube and made his way toward the weapons fire, careful not to give away his position with the light from his wrist beacon.

Voyager’s corridors were not designed with armed combat in mind. The shape of the hallway was roughly two to three meters square. There were no structures in the hall that would allow him to take cover save for the occasional adjoining hallway. All Tuvok could do was hold his phaser out in front of him and proceed carefully forward. He could hear the unmistakable sound of Starfleet phaser fire which made a fsssssh sound. But he could also hear alien weaponry which made a kzzzzzt sound that Tuvok was unable to identify.

As he rounded the corridor, the bright flashes of Starfleet orange and alien blue phaser fire illuminated the corridor. Judging from their position, the intruders had taken control of main engineering and were defensively holding off the Starfleet forces. He was very close now. Tuvok inched forward and found that he had emerged on the intruder’s unguarded flank. He could make out several humanoid shapes in the darkness which did not respond to his presence. Tuvok leveled his phaser and fired off a series of rapid bursts. The bright beams of orange light streaked across the corridor like bolts of lightning, striking their targets with impeccable precision.

In the dark, Tuvok couldn’t make out the forms of the intruders, but they apparently wore some kind of protective armor. The phaser blasts, which would normally have incapacitated a humanoid in a single blow, seemed instead to be only mildly effective. The intruders Tuvok had struck fell to the ground, dazed but not totally stunned.

“Now’s our chance! Press forward!” From the other side of the corridor, Captain Janeway shouted her commands and the crew reacted in kind. A flurry of phaser blasts assaulted the intruder’s position, including those from the compression phaser rifle the Captain was wielding, which emitted small yellow bolts of energy in rapid succession.

The intruders were driven from their position, back into main engineering. Tuvok quickly closed the distance to the large set of doors which connected engineering to the corridor. Janeway ran up from the other side. Tuvok recognized several of the crew members behind the Captain. Most were the engineering staff along with Lieutenant Torres who led them.

Tuvok peered around the edge of the door, but was quickly met with a hail of blue energy, forcing him back into cover. “A direct assault on their position would be inadvisable, Captain.” Tuvok observed with calm Vulcan precision.

Torres piped up from behind Janeway. “We can’t take the chance of someone hitting the warp core. Even one shot could destabilize the reaction chamber containment field, and then we’d have a core breach on our hands.”

Captain Janeway paused for a moment, her mind rapidly sifting through potential options. She handed the phaser rifle to Torres and then knelt down to the wall behind her. She depressed the top section of the panel and it came free, revealing a previously hidden control interface and array of isolinear chips inside. Janeway deftly manipulated the controls with Torres supervising.

“Captain.” Torres said hesitantly. “Are you sure about this? Dropping the outer containment field around the core will flood engineering with radiation.”

“If we don’t retake control of the ship, we’ll all be dead to theta radiation within minutes anyway.” Janeway replied defiantly. “And I’m not about to let a bunch of thieves take my ship without a fight.” With that, Janeway yanked out one of the isolinear chips.

A deafeningly loud alarm began to blare in main engineering. Tuvok saw a brief flash of light from around the door accompanied by a short zapping sound, signaling that the forcefield around the warp core had fallen. In moments, a blast of heat began to radiate out from engineering into the hallway. Inside the room, Tuvok could hear the sounds of voices shouting in a language he could not understand. He looked around the bend to see all the alien intruders evacuate through a hole they had blasted into on the far side of the room.

The instant engineering had been cleared, Janeway shouted out orders. “B’Elanna, dump the power from the core directly into the EPS manifold! I’ll open the injector ports on the core manually. Everyone else, stay here.”

Without hesitation, Janeway and Torres ran into engineering. Torres manipulated the controls at one of the panels that was still operating while Janeway fetched a hyperspanner and sprinted toward the core. Janeway attached the end of the spanner to one of the metal rings at the base of the reactor which was now spewing deadly radiation in all directions. Once she completed one revolution of the metal ring, the warp core sprang back to life, it’s blueish green mixture of plasma beginning to swirl rapidly inside.

Within seconds, all the lights on the ship sprang back on to full capacity. Tuvok saw Janeway begin to stand up. But just as quickly as she stood, she fell back down to the floor as if suddenly drunk. Tuvok felt a deep gut wrenching feeling in his stomach at the sight. At that moment, all the years of training Starfleet had instilled into Tuvok fled from him. The only thing in his mind now was the fact that Kathryn Janeway, his longtime captain and closest friend, was dying in front of him and he was just standing there watching it happen. Tuvok defied Janeway’s orders and ran into the room. He was instantly inundated with a sensation of intense heat from all directions. His Vulcan physiology however, had evolved to survive on a planet carpeted in arid deserts and unforgiving wastelands. He easily ignored the assault from the oppressive environment in which he now found himself, and pushed on through.

He reached the Captain, grasping one of her arms and supporting her while she stood. They made their way back out into the corridor, followed by Torres. Once outside, Janeway had enough strength to stand against the wall. She slapped the comm badge on her chest and rasped. “Janeway to bridge, status.”

“Kim here, Captain.” Said Ensign Kim over the intercom. “I’ve got shields back online. We’re surrounded by several alien objects, they’re emitting a dampening field that is draining power from all our systems.”

“Target phasers, destroy them!” Janeway ordered.

As they waited for Kim’s response, Tuvok heard a deep thud from inside the ship. Suddenly, all the air in the corridor began to get sucked into engineering. Everyone braced themselves against the gale of wind, using the walls for support. After a moment, the rushing air ceased.

“Is everyone alright?” Janeway asked the group.

“Affirmative.” Tuvok said.

“Harry, report.” Janeway said into her combadge.

“I’ve destroyed the devices and the dampening field is falling. The alien vessel has detached itself from Voyager’s hull and is moving off. Emergency force fields are in place and holding.”

“Target phasers and photon torpedoes. Disable that ship.” Janeway ordered.

“It’s too late Captain.” Harry replied. “They’ve gone to warp.”

“Track their warp trail. I’m on my way to the bridge.” Janeway declared as she took a step away from the wall.

“Captain-” Torres started, concerned.

“B’Elanna.” Janeway snapped. “Initiate radiation containment procedures, then get warp drive back online. We can’t let that ship escape.”

“Captain.” Tuvok said. “We must escort you to sickbay.”

“I’m fine.” Janeway protested, placing her hand on her forehead. “I can get to the bridge on my own, I just need a minute to…” Her voice began to trail off. She took one errant step forward before collapsing where she stood. Tuvok reached out and caught her mid-fall. He lowered her down onto the deck as the crew crowded around them. Tuvok noted that Janeway’s eyes were sealed shut.

“How is she?” Torres asked.

Tuvok felt that gut wrenching feeling return as he checked for a pulse. “I do not know.”