[Continuing from Book 7 of 7: What Lay Beyond] Janeway finds herself first on the Enterprise, then at Starfleet Academy, but the events convince her that it is not real and she discovers that Q is behind it, and that Fluffy/Barkley is a pet of young q. She is also disconcerted to find that the gateways are a child’s toy to Q, and one that young q had inadvertently lost his dog through. The Q continuum had given the technology previously to the Iconians. Q agrees to send her back and arranges to takes the ships in Janeway’s convoy home, but Janeway refuses to let Q take Voyager home as she doesn’t want to be in his debt. The V’enah and the Todanians decide to stay as they can’t imagine their homeworld accepting the V’enah as equals, and the Ones Who Will Not Be Named also stay, as they have got used to having company.
Various authors
More stories from the book are included in the Next Generation section
A Night at Sandrine’s (Voyager – Christie Golden): Tom Paris has been given permission to use the holodeck to stage a party for the crew but things go wrong for him when one of the holosuite characters (Ricky), based on an ex-girlfriend, turns on him. He starts to think that the character has become sentient and is paying him back for the way he had treated the original lady. Actually, B’Elanna and Harry had reprogrammed some of the characters for a lark. Anyway, Tom starts to regret some of his past actions, and ends up deleting the Ricky character. [Timeline: Stardate 50396.2]
When Push Comes to Shove (Voyager – Josepha Sherman & Susan Shwartz): The Enterprise rescues a troupe of T’kari from their damaged spaceship and finds that a child, Lari, among them (who had been lost and then adopted by the troupe) is a natural teleporter. Then a ship of the Morak arrives and tries to force them to hand over the child, but Lari transports herself to a nearby moon. The Morak go after her but Seven (who is part of the Voyager team searching for her) helps her use natural crystals in a cave to aid Lari in enhancing the teleportation effect and ‘beam’ the two of them back to Voyager and escape from the Morak. However, Lari gets angry with the Morak and teleports them and their ship well away, but Janeway is pleased to see she does no harm to them. The T’kari and Lari get dropped off at a planet of their choosing.
The Space Vortex of Doom (Voyager – D.W. “Prof” Smith): Captain Proton boards Chaotica’s Blaster Ship but is too late to stop Chaotica blasting a giant red star and setting it on a path towards Earth. Captain Proton realizes that the only way to stop the red star is to deflect it enough, so that it gets drawn into the Space Vortex of Doom. While they are successful in doing so, his ship, along with Proton, Constance and Kincaid starts to get drawn towards the vortex also.
Steven Piziks
Voyager is battling an ion storm when they notice a small warp-capable ship also in trouble and they protect it, but suffer damage themselves. It turns out that this was the first test flight of a warp capable ship from the planet Chi, and the inhabitants, the Chiar, offer help in repairing Voyager. However, it is soon discovered that the Chiar depend almost entirely on nanites for their technology, and elaborate precautions are taken to prevent nanites getting loose on Voyager. They also find that the occupants of one continent, Sherek, have effectively enslaved the inhabitants of two others, the Goracar Alliance, and quarantined the inhabitants of a fourth continent, Ushek. B’Elanna is nearly kidnapped at an early meeting with the Chiar. Later, someone gets nanites aboard Voyager and their transporter technology is stolen and Tom Paris and Seven are kidnapped, with Tom Paris being sold into slavery to Zedrel (who had been the pilot and designer of their warp ship). Tom escapes and gets beamed back to Voyager, but he has lost his memory. Meanwhile, Seven has been taken to Ushek by Pek, leader of the Ushek-Shereki Freedom Movement (although the leader of the Goracar Alliance had been behind her original abduction). Pek wants to use her Borg nanoprobes but her Borg nanoprobes try to assimilate the Chiar nanites into the Borg collective. Seven reluctantly saves the Chiar from having the Borg notified of their existence by introducing a virus into the nanites that effectively puts them all to sleep. The Chiar are now without their technology and it looks as though they will have to cooperate among each other to get their technology back and learn to do things themselves in the meantime.
Christie Golden
The Voyager crew is a little surprised at the rather low-key welcome they get on arriving back in the Alpha Quadrant but, considering the war that the area has been through, it is fairly understandable. Harry Kim is pleased to find that his girlfriend, Libby, is still interested in him and available, but doesn’t realize that she is working for Starfleet Intelligence. The Doctor is disappointed that people aren’t rushing to offer him positions that can employ his medical talents, so when he gets a call from someone called Oliver Baines, he is eager to meet him. However, Baines is the programmer in charge of the EMH Mark Ones on Lynarik Prime and he is talking about a holographic rebellion, but the Doctor will have nothing to do with it. However, when the rebellion takes place, the Doctor is taken into custody and Admiral Kenneth Montgomery, who is in charge of the study of Voyager and its technology (Project Full Circle), is eager to have the Doctor deactivated. Then it is discovered that people are spontaneously turning into Borg (including Kevin, the child of Janeway’s ex-boyfriend, Mark and his wife Carla) and all of the Voyager crew are rounded up and only released, one-by-one, after Doctor Jarem Kaz has checked them out and certified them as being free of Borg nanoprobes. Seven and Icheb are kept in custody and Admiral Montgomery will not allow them to have a regeneration chamber, so they are starting to get weaker despite Doctor Kaz’s medications. Meanwhile, Brenna Covington, director of Starfleet Intelligence’s Covert Operations, has put Libby in charge of investigating Admiral Montgomery but the evidence that she had been supplied with seems to prove false as she starts to check it out (with him being suspected of doing something at one place when the records clearly show he was somewhere else). Meanwhile, B’Elanna has discovered that her mother may still be alive on Boreth and has gone on a Challenge of the Spirit to try to find her.
Christie Golden
Libby’s investigations lead her to Trevor Blake and among the documents she captures from his computer is one long document called the Royal Protocol which starts off as the boring manual she had expected it to be, but she then finds an encrypted section. Her study of that seems to indicate that it is instructions for creating a Borg queen. When she sees Brenna Covington’s reaction to her having approached Blake, she begins to suspect who the new Borg queen is. Covington has been working with Brian Grady, Trevor Blake and an EMH (emergency medical hologram) to turn herself into a Borg queen. She is the one who has been activating the Borg virus which had been lying dormant among the Borg artifacts that Starfleet had been studying. Meanwhile, Janeway has called on the assistance of Data and when Admiral Montgomery refuses to let the Doctor or Seven assist in the study of the Borg virus, they stage a ‘jailbreak’ with the assistance of Doctor Kaz and some photonics (Janeway having made a deal with Oliver Baines). Janeway and her group take over Voyager and complete their research (helped by anonymous tips from Libby, using the codename Peregrine). Before they can carry out any course of action, Admiral Montgomery discovers what is happening and beams aboard Voyager, but he ends up joining Janeway in an attack on Covington’s headquarters. They finally succeed in locating and killing Covington and restore those who have been affected by the virus to normal. Baines is found dead, apparently having committed suicide. He lives on as a photonic in the company of Lieutenant Vassily Andropov, who had been held captive by Baines in a kind of ‘role-reversal’ situation (being put through the same kind of things that photonics face in holonovels and the like). During all this, B’Elanna finds her mother but her mother, Miral, dies after they have to battle a grikshak.
Spirit Walk, Book 1 of 2 – Old Wounds
Christie Golden
Voyager is on its maiden voyage under the captaincy of Chakotay, with the task of returning a group of colonists to their colony world (which has gone mysteriously silent recently). Kim’s girlfriend, Libby, (who he thinks is simply an entertainer) is trying to track down who has been illegally retrieving records from Voyager’s logs, and Admiral Janeway is heading to a conference to try to stave off a group of planets who are considering leaving the Federation. Tom Paris and B’Elanna are at Boreth, researching the scrolls that are supposedly talking about their daughter Miral (who has been called the Kuvah’Magh) until Janeway gets Tom to accompany her at the conference. Seven and the Doctor are participating in a Think Tank. The new doctor aboard Voyager is Jarem Kaz, a Trill who became joined after his symbiont’s previous host was mortally wounded during the attack on the Maquis moon base. Chakotay’s second-in-command is the priggish Andrew Ellis, and Chakotay’s sister, Sekaya, joins the ship as a spiritual advisor to the colonists. On arrival at the colony world, Loran II, they find no life signs and a mysterious storm raging exactly where the colony had been located, and Chakotay sends an away team, led by Ellis, to investigate. Ellis has the team separate and approach the colony through the storm and when Ellis enters the colony, he reports back to Chakotay that he has found a strange chalked symbol. Chakotay recognizes the symbol as a chamozi and he realizes that the strange storm is reminiscent of their encounter with the Sky Spirits. He and Sekaya go down to investigate, but they find themselves as captives of the Cardassian scientist Krell Moset, who had previously been believed dead after the ship that had been taking him into captivity had exploded. They also find that the person they had known as Andrew Ellis was actually a shapeshifter who had been also known as Arak Katal. Sekaya recognizes Moset from when he had conducted experiments on the inhabitants of their planet, which had resulted in the death of her fiancé, Blue Water Dreamer. [Timeline: year 2378]
Spirit Walk, Book 2 of 2 – Enemy of My Enemy
Christie Golden
The Changeling has some creatures (that Moset has created) attack the other members of the away team, then he changes his appearance to that of Chakotay, removes the real Ellis from stasis (where he has been kept for seven years while the Changeling impersonated him), kills Ellis and returns to Voyager as Chakotay. The Changeling had been ‘frozen’ as Ellis by the other members of the Dominion because he had started taking independent action outside of the link. He had rescued Moset, who had been working to restore the Changeling’s abilities, and he could now at least change his form to any other male humanoid. The Changeling/Chakotay has Voyager head back to Earth but he sees no option but to return to Loran II after the doctor discovers that Ellis’s body had been in stasis for seven years, and that the DNA of the monsters that had attacked the away team was a combination of Chakotay’s DNA and that of the missing colonists. Meanwhile the doctor and Kim had been getting suspicious of “Chakotay”’s actions and had got a report off to Seven and to Janeway. Between them they come to realize that the most likely solution is that ‘Chakotay’ is a Changeling, and Tom Paris is sent to coordinate action. Meanwhile, the real Chakotay has been sowing the seeds of doubt about the Changeling’s motives in Moset’s mind. The Changeling return to the planet alone on a shuttle, just as Paris arrives aboard the Delta Flyer, and Paris lands Voyager on the planet (through another mysterious storm) to start the attack on the Changeling’s base. Moset had been using Sky Spirit DNA to try to restore the Changeling and had discovered that Chakotay had had a more recent infusion of it while in the Delta Quadrant. When Moset realizes that the Changeling wants to take his creatures from him, he organizes resistance to the Changeling by giving Chakotay a large infusion of Sky Spirit DNA. Chakotay takes a Spirit Walk during the infusion (assisted by Sekaya) to survive the infusion. The colonists had become monsters because they were unprepared for the DNA’s effects. Then the group are able to defeat the Changeling, but the Changeling escapes in a cloaked ship and takes the form of the leader of one of the planets that was planning to leave the Federation. Jarem Kaz lets his former symbiont’s host show Moset what evil he had been doing and Moset ends up a broken man. The think tank, that Seven and the Doctor are part of, starts working on ways to get Moset’s creatures to revert to their original human form.
Tales from the Captain's Table
Edited by Keith R.A. DeCandido
Seduced (Christie Golden): Chakotay, as a youth of 15 on his home planet, was excited when a Starfleet ship, the Mandela, visits and he, his sister Sekaya (one year younger), and his friend Blue Water Boy (from another tribe) go to meet them. Being from a patriarchal society, they are surprised to meet three women, Captain Demora Sulu, Commander T’Piran (the female Vulcan first officer), and Lieutenant Commander Anne O’Hara (chief engineer). Sekaya informs Sulu of Chakotay’s interest in Starfleet. Sulu offers to sponsor his application to the Academy but he has to train for the entrance exam. He is also supposed to be training for a tribal coming-of-age ceremony but he spends too much time on his secret Starfleet studies (he is keeping it from his father, along with the fact that the captain is a woman) and Chakotay fails the tribal ceremony. His father is disappointed but suggest taking him to Earth to explore his heritage, although that means he will have to take the Starfleet exam early. Nevertheless, he passes the Starfleet exam with flying colors. When he tells his father, he is surprised when his father takes it philosophically, saying he had passed his initiation into manhood but by the rites of a different tribe. His father was just as surprised when he finally met the captain, as finds out that ‘he’ is a ‘she’.
String Theory, Book 1 of 3 – Cohesion
Jeffrey Lang
When Voyager suddenly loses warp drive while passing a highly unusual binary system with a white dwarf star and inhabited planet, the ship nearly collides with a massive Monorhan spaceship. The other ship was trying to escape from the radiation in the system that is affecting the viability of life on their planet, Monorha, but they had also lost propulsion. Captain Ziv of the Monorhan ship is aboard Voyager, along with his ‘hara’, when Voyager’s attempt to tow the alien ship to its destination results in the disintegration of the alien vessel and the loss of all life onboard. It is then discovered that something in the radiation from the white dwarf (known as the Blue Eye to the Monorhans) affects the physics of matter in the region. Voyager is able to move on impulse power to return the captain and his group to the planet, and B’Elanna Torres and Seven are sent down in a shuttle to see if they can assist the Monorhans with their shielding. On the way down, a subspace energy surge causes the shuttle to crash and Voyager to get trapped in a sort of ‘subspace fold’. Seven and Torres find the establishment where the energy blast came from but get injured by a booby-trap while investigating, and Torres is blinded and Seven is paralyzed from the waist down. By injecting Torres with nanoprobes, Seven enables her to grow a bionic eye and Seven’s nanoprobes get the information they need to restore Seven’s mobility. They then team up with the group of renegade scientists at the establishment who are trying to develop a better shielding technology. The two Voyager groups get in contact via subspace and come up with a plan to get Voyager out of the subspace fold by collapsing the white dwarf, which they are now certain has been placed there by some outside agency. Some of Monorha’s history gets learnt, including a bit about a fourteenth tribe and a member of that tribe called Dagan who discovered the Key to Gremadia (which ends up being given to Captain Janeway), and about another large spaceship called ‘Betasis’ that had carried a group of the fourteenth tribe and was led by Gora. Voyager does get back (despite the efforts of a Monorhan called Sem, who is Ziv’s ‘rih-hara-tan’), but the white dwarf explodes instead of collapsing. However, the problems in the region appear to be basically solved until another singularity is discovered in the area, and it is found that Tuvok has disappeared. [Timeline: between the fourth and fifth seasons of the TV series, several months after news of the destruction of the Maquis had reached them]
String Theory, Book 2 of 3 – Fusion
Kirston Beyer
The lost ship carrying the 14th tribe had found what they believed was Gremadia, in the form of a massive space station orbiting the ‘Blue Eye’ but, when they boarded the station, they became infected by some ‘parasite’ and quickly died. The one exception was their rih-hara-tan, Assylia, who transferred her consciousness into the organic computer controlling their ship, the Betasis, and dedicated herself to warning others away from the station. However, Tuvok has received a call, in the form of music in his head, and takes a shuttle and heads for the space station but has a bad landing (after encountering the event horizon of the singularity) and almost dies. He is rescued by some being or beings on the station and is infected with the same ‘parasite’. When Janeway discovers where Tuvok is headed, she takes Voyager after him and has a slightly smoother docking with the station after the station sends out a tractor net to bring it in. They recover Tuvok from a room containing the remains of the 14th tribe. The Doctor sets himself the task of trying to find a way to save Tuvok from the parasite, but Tuvok does his best to thwart those efforts during his brief moments of consciousness because he is looking forward to becoming the same kind of almost immortal being that the members of the 14th tribe had become. A Nacene is masquerading as Janeway’s sister, Phoebe, and has planted false memories in the minds of all the crew except for the Doctor (who she had failed to consider) and Naomi and Harry Kim (who prove to both be immune to her efforts). Consequently, doubts start to be raised in Janeway’s mind about her supposed sister. It turns out that Phoebe is one of a group of Nacene who had started ‘playing’ with the strings making up our universe and had created a number of anomalies, including Monoharan space, and there had been a fierce dispute between this group of Nacene and the others. The station was supposed to provide a doorway back to Exosia, the Nacene home realm, and the ‘parasites’ were meant to prepare the Nacene for the return. The ‘Key of Gremadia’ which had been given to Janeway was the missing link to open the gateway to Exosia and, as the ‘owner’ of the Key, Janeway was the only one who could use it. Phoebe has seemingly no regret or compassion about the 14th tribe or any other ‘lesser mortals’ and is just interested in using Janeway to provide a path for the exiled Nacene to return home. However, Janeway opens the gateway to let the surviving ‘reborn’ 14th tribe pass through to Exosia, and Assylia sacrifices herself (with the help of the ‘parasite’ that Tuvok had passed on to her) to save Janeway’s life, but Janeway ends up in a coma. That transfer takes place just before the Betasis self-destructs, destroying the Gremadia station, and Voyager escapes with seconds to spare but then find that the doctor and his program are missing. Harry and Tom are already missing after an attempt to utilize the tetryon transporter system on the station to take them and a shuttle craft out into Monoharan space. [Timeline: circa Stardate 52019.1]
String Theory Book 3 of 3 – Evolution
Heather Jarman
Janeway remains in a coma, the Doctor has seemingly vanished into the rift, Tom Paris and Harry Kim have disappeared on a shuttle flight, and Chakotay is left captaining Voyager and wondering if he can recover any of the missing crew and escape from Monorhan space, which is apparently breaking up around them. The Doctor had actually ended up in Exosia where he meets Vivia, who is the ‘leader’ of the Nacene who look after the strings. He stops the Nacene destroying the transformed Monorhans who had got into Exosia. The Doctor then gets sent back in time to stop the leader of the ‘rebel’ Nacene, known as the Light, but instead he meets with Kes, and the two of them help the Light’s son, Kol (Keeper of the Light) be born. Meanwhile, Tom and Harry have met up with Q who had ‘lost’ Kol (now a student at QU – Q University), and they help track him down (assisted by q, a young lady q that Harry falls in love with). Between them, they manage to convince Vivia that the strings can survive by themselves, and the Nacene move on to exploring the universe. Phoebe (who was now leading the ‘rebel’ Nacene) had been trying everything she could to get back to Exosia, including killing one of her fellow Nacene and destroying Monorha. Kes has to contain her in Exosia, with Kes getting trapped there herself for a time. Later, Kes finds a way to get back to the ‘normal’ universe where she meets up with her ‘son’, Kol, and the two of them work together to help the Ocampans get back to living a self-sufficient life (ancient Ocampa was where the Doctor had been sent to find the Light). Kol had assisted in Janeway’s recovery but had insisted that she never be told all that had gone on in Monorhan space, so all records of the events are purged from Voyager’s database. [Timeline: between the fourth and fifth TV seasons of Voyager]
Various authors
Da Capo al Fine, Parts I and II (Heather Jarman): The Admiral Janeway from the future, who had come back through time to help Captain Janeway and the Voyager crew get back to the alpha quadrant, has placed herself in the hands of the Borg Queen and is being assimilated, thus introducing a neurolytic pathogen while Voyager escapes. Captain Janeway keeps finding herself in various potentially fatal situations that always seem to involve Seska, even though Seska was not actually there when the events really happened. Janeway comes to realize that ‘Seska’ is actually the alien who had previously appeared to her in the form of her father and this alien offers to give her an afterlife of serenity, but Janeway opts for facing reality, even if it does mean dying to let Voyager return home.
Command Code (Robert Greenberger): The Starfleet and Maquis crews were getting started on integrating, when Voyager suddenly finds itself in a minefield that had been hidden from it and Janeway is injured and rendered unconscious when they accidently set off another one. Then they are surrounded by five Dresh ships and, when Chakotay tries to bluff them, he finds that Tuvok has disabled his command codes until he has proved himself. This leads to a confrontation between Chakotay and Tuvok in front of the crew and while surrounded by five hostile ships. Ultimately, Tuvok relents and is later taken to task by Captain Janeway for not trusting her decision to appoint Chakotay as her second-in-command. But Chakotay also accepts that he needs to polish up on Starfleet protocols, and they all start working together amicably. [Timeline: shortly after the pilot episode, Caretaker]
Winds of Change (Kim Sheard): Kes is trying to overcome the aggression she has felt since being possessed by Tieran and she asks B’Elanna if she can help her. Sports do not work, then B’Elanna comes up with the idea of achieving something through physical work and suggests building a windmill. At around the same time, an unknown ship starts following them close behind. It does not make any aggressive moves but also does not respond to hails. The only thing they have been able to ascertain is that the other ship’s power levels are slowly increasing. Kes had been studying the history and uses of windmills and speculates to B’Elanna that the ship might be using the turbulence from Voyager’s warp eddies to generate energy. B’Elanna adjusts the warp field a bit to help speed up the process, and they observe the ship’s energy levels rise until it leaves after making one communication saying, ‘Thank you’. [Timeline: soon after the 3rd season episode ‘Warlord’]
Talent Night (Jeffrey Lang): Voyager is passing through the void of the Nekrit Expanse and Janeway suggests that a talent show would be a good way to keep people occupied and strongly recommends that her command staff get involved as an example to the other crew members. The talent show proves to be a success, despite the fact that problems with the warp core means that power is not available for the holodeck that a number of the acts had planned to use. Tom Paris had taken on the job of programming the holodeck for the show and had got B’Elanna to assist with the lighting, and after working together on the project B’Elanna and Tom had become good friends. [Timeline: shortly before the 3rd season episode ‘Coda’]
Letting Go (Keith R.A. DeCandido): Mark Johnson agreed to look after Molly (Janeway’s dog) during her mission to the Badlands and soon afterwards got the call from Benjamin Sisko telling him that Voyager was missing. A year later, he attends a gathering on DS9 of family and friends of the missing Voyager crew. Amongst those he meets there are Davey Honigsberg, whose father had been on Voyager and who believes the ship must be safe somewhere because no wreckage had been found, and Dina Voyskunsky whose sort-of-boyfriend was on Voyager. Sometime later, Dina asks Mark why he isn’t dating Carla, a scientist who has recently joined his team. A year later, there was another gathering of Voyager family and friends, but fewer people this time. Mark has let the events affect his life to some extent, but not as much as Davey has – he has become obsessed with finding out what happened to Voyager to the point where he was endangering his life, and Mark was instrumental in turning him around. A little before the third anniversary of Voyager’s disappearance, Mark starts dating Carla and Mark cannot bring himself to attend the annual gathering. Soon afterwards, they get married and then six weeks later they get word that a message has been received from Voyager, transmitted via an alien communications array and with the help of the Doctor. Mark ends up having to send a ‘Dear John’ letter to Kath.
Closure (James Swallow): Neelix and Seven get trapped in caves they were exploring on the planet Nyma IV when an earthquake occurs. Seven is injured and trapped and when Neelix goes to try and find a way out (the rocks prevent them communicating with Voyager) he finds Kes uninjured, and she doesn’t seem worried even though Neelix discovers all the exits are blocked. She shows him where telepathic records had been embedded in the cave walls by the previous Ocampan inhabitants of the planet. When Neelix goes back to check on Seven, she reminds him that Kes had become a non-corporeal being over a year ago, which Neelix had somehow forgotten. He goes back and finds her and tells her how he had always loved her, then another earthquake occurs but somehow Voyager’s power gets boosted sufficiently for them to locate Seven and Neelix and beam them out. Neelix realizes Kes had somehow returned to save them and to give him the opportunity to say goodbye. [Timeline: during the fifth televised season]
The Secret Heart of Zolaluz (Robert T. Jeschonek): Seven had been trying to rescue Janeway (who had been captured by Hazari bounty hunters) but Seven’s shuttle and the Hazari craft carrying Janeway crash on the planet Saladana and Seven finds herself being rescued by Zolaluz. Zolaluz is infected with the duluzola and is crippled, and she and fellow sufferers live in kind-of leper colonies or at least isolated from the other inhabitants. Seven is impressed with Zolaluz’s amazing concern for her, even locating Janeway (who was being held in a militia camp) and, along with a group of fellow sufferers, helps rescue Janeway. Zolaluz loses an arm in the rescue and doesn’t seem put out by it, but Seven is disappointed when Janeway quotes the Prime Directive for not letting the Doctor cure her. What Seven doesn’t know is that Zolaluz’s life had been getting too much for her and she had been going to kill herself, but rescuing Seven and Janeway had given her new purpose in life. [Timeline: between the 5th season episodes ‘Infinite Regress’ and ‘Bliss’]
Isabo’s Shirt (Kirsten Beyer): The crew is holding what was supposed to be a surprise birthday party for Chakotay after five years aboard Voyager, but he gets a bigger surprise before the party when Janeway gives him a Bonding Box. To Chakotay, that is effectively a declaration of love and he later gives her a gift (in accordance with his tribe’s tradition) and lets her know he loves her. While Janeway does return his feelings, she had not meant what Chakotay had read into the gift and explains to Chakotay that she could never get intimately involved with him under their current conditions, for fear that she might lose him. At the end Chakotay is left with hope, and they get back to their comfortable business relationship. [Timeline: a few weeks after the 5th season episode ‘Bliss’]