=/\=

It had only taken three days to reach the Mandorian system at warp eight. When Anna announced that she had it on sensor range, Natalie immediately asked for it to be on screen. She was unimpressed. The system was virtually unoccupied. There was no sign of ships anywhere within a lightyear.

Anna was able to locate the specific planet within a couple minutes and Blake slowly pulled them in a high orbit, not wanting to attract to much attention, but enough so they planet knew they weren’t going anywhere. The planet looked to be heavily industrialized. The planet had a grayish overtone due to the majority of space taken up by buildings and other structures. There was virtually no blue, save for a few patches here and there, with an equal amount of green patches.

"Lovely," Blake quipped. "Remind you of anyone?" Naomi grimaced.

"Yeah," she replied dryly. "The Borg". Naomi shrugged off the memories of her hostage situation just a few months earlier and focused back on what was at hand. "Andy, how are the shields doing?"

"They’re at ninety-two percent" he replied.

Naomi turned to him, clearly not happy. "Ninety-two? Ninety-two?! Why is it at ninety-two?" she asked.

"You had a bunch of kids fixing these systems, ninety-two is what you got," Andy replied. Naomi sighed and shook her head. She flopped down into Chakotay’s chair and rested her head in her hands. Natalie, who had been sitting in the captain’s chair silently, suddenly got up.

"Hail them," she ordered. Naomi was shocked.

"Hold on," Naomi interrupted. "What do you mean hail them? Hail who? And then what? Do you have a plan?".

"Plan? What’s a plan?" Natalie returned sarcastically. "I’m a Janeway, plans are for losers." Naomi put her hand on her hip, thinking Natalie was serious.

"Nat, I’m not going to put this ship at a risk we aren’t ready to face," Naomi replied sternly. Natalie turned and put both hands on her hips.

"I am not taking an unnecessary risk and we will never accomplish anything if we just sit here and wait for them to come to us," she said. "Noah, hail them". Noah started to put in the commands to hail.

"Belay that order," Naomi ordered again. Noah stopped in mid-tap. Naomi was starting to get on Natalie’s nerves. Noah wasn’t sure what he was supposed to do. Natalie was the captain but Naomi was the first officer and she said not to hail them. Who did he listen to?

"Naomi, may I please see you in my ready room?" Natalie asked bitterly. Naomi didn’t say anything but marched into the ready room, followed by Natalie. Nothing was said until the doors had firmly shut behind Natalie.

"What the hell do you think you’re doing?" Natalie spat. Naomi squinted her eyes in anger.

"Tough words for someone who doesn’t have a clue what she’s doing," Naomi retorted. "You may be a Janeway but right now you have the immaturity of a Paris." Natalie gasped at the insult but quickly recovered.

"And you have the mouth of a Torres," Natalie returned. "You are on thin ice, Wildman." Naomi chuckled.

"Ooh, going from swearing to last names, you must be feeling lucky today," Naomi snapped. She turned from Natalie and started walking away from her, heading towards the couch.

"What the hell is wrong with you, Naomi?" Natalie asked. "You’ve never questioned an order I’ve given Noah, not even in one of the simulations." Naomi turned on her heels and put her hands on the bar that separate the upper level from the lower level. She gripped the bar tightly and Natalie could see her knuckles turn white.

"That’s because you’ve never done something stupid," Naomi answered. "You’re about to confront your mother’s kidnappers and you don’t have a clue on what you’re going to say. And, on top of that, when I belay your order, you didn’t even follow procedure to ask me why. That, Miss Captain, is what’s wrong with me." Natalie was in shock. She took in a quick breath and then sighed. She shook her head.

"Ok, why did you belay my order?" Natalie asked. She titled her head expectantly.

"It’s a bit late for that, Nat," Naomi retorted. But, if you must know, you don’t have a clue on what you’re doing. You haven’t had enough training to be able to handle situations like this."

"I’ve had just as much training as you have," Natalie replied.

"No, you haven’t," Naomi corrected. "I have seniority. I should be the captain right now, not you." Natalie was trying to figure out what Naomi was getting at. Natalie was the daughter of Captain Janeway, so it was only natural she became captain in this kind of situation, wasn’t it? Naomi felt otherwise and was determined to get what she felt was her rightful position on the bridge, not some twenty-two year old first officer serving a fifteen-year-old captain.

"You’re kidding me, right?" Natalie asked, seriously. "You? As Captain?"

"Don’t sound so shocked, Nat," Naomi replied, a bit offended. "I have more training that you."

"But I have more experience than you," Natalie retorted. "I have been Captain in every damn simulation we’ve ever done. You have always been the first officer. Of course we’re going to do it the same way in real life, that’s what we’re good at!". Naomi shook her head.

"Fine, whatever," Naomi said. "But I still think…" Naomi didn’t have enough time to continue before Noah interrupted their conversation.

"Kim to Janeway, please report to the bridge." Naomi and Natalie exited the ready room and stepped onto the bridge. Before Natalie even had a word out, Noah was already talking.

"We have an incoming hail from the Mandorians, Captain," Noah said very formally. "Would you like to respond?". Natalie quickly glanced at Naomi, who gave her nod of approval.

"Answer it, Mr. Kim," Natalie ordered. Natalie and Naomi took their seats. Noah was stationed at the Ops station, with Andy on the other side of the Bridge at the Tactical station. Emily was seated at the Engineering console, and big brother Blake was at the conn. Anna was standing directly above Natalie, on the first level.

The face of the Mandorian prelate flashed onto the screen. "Who are you?"

"I am acting Captain Natalie Janeway of the Federation Starship Voyager," she announced. "I believe you have my crew held hostage, Prelate." He paused and frowned.

"I don’t know what you are talking about," he replied, pretending to be oblivious.

"Don’t lie, Prelate," Natalie said. "We can prove you were on board this ship and that you’ve taken our crew hostage. Please return them." The Prelate smiled.

"I’m sorry, I must have had you confused with someone else," he said. "Yes, we have your crew. But no, we will not return them. Not until we have completed the questioning."

"Questioning?" Naomi asked, concerned. "What questioning?". The Prelate shook his head, clearly annoyed.

"Your ship is from an unknown place," the Prelate said. "We are simply asking some questions about… your peoples origin." Naomi rolled her eyes. Question about origins my foot, she thought.

"And how long were you expecting this questioning to last, Prelate?" Naomi asked as politely as she could. The Prelate shrugged, not really caring. He hadn’t thought about how long it would take. He sat in his chair, swiveling a bit. He’s stalling, Naomi hypothesized.

"Oh, I don’t know…a week, maybe," the Prelate said, shrugging. "Maybe two, or more…I haven’t really thought about it." Natalie raised her eyebrows.

"Ok, lemme get back to you, ok?" Natalie quickly said before motioning Noah to cut the transmission off. The screen went blank, replacing the image of the Prelate with a view of the space outside. Natalie put her head in her hand as she leaned against the armrest. She sighed. This was not going to be easy, that’s for sure. Natalie turned to face Naomi, who was equally displeased with the events that just took place. "Now what?".

Naomi shrugged. "I have no idea. I would think we should find where they are holding the crew and then seeing if we can transport them through. Noah, why don’t you see if you can find their biosigns on the planet." Noah tapped the console. A few moments later, Noah answered.

"I think I’ve located one hundred and forty-one lifeforms that are not Mandorian," Noah reported.

"Why the variable, Kim?" Natalie asked. Noah paused, his eyebrows furrowed with concentration. The Ops console changed colors and images as his fingers pushed various buttons at the station. The console wasn’t telling him anything and he tried again and again. He slammed his down on the screen angrily, something the "senior staff" wasn’t used to, and the console beeped. Noah always had a calm temperament and to see Noah even vaguely upset was something unique indeed.

"Well, I think I know where they are but they are very faint and its hard for the sensors to distinguish what they are," Noah explained. "But I’m almost positive this is where they are. It’s worth a shot anyway."

"Would Astrometrics be able to determine it better?" Blake asked. Noah pondered this for a moment. He shrugged.

"Yeah, I suppose it would. It has a longer range than Ops does, but at this distance I don’t think either would really matter," Noah answered. "Anna, why don’t you run down to Astrometrics and check it out, ok?"

"Right," Anna replied and exited the Bridge onto the turbolift. Minutes later, Anna reported back from Astrometrics. "Ok, I’m here now. I’m accessing the sensors and I should be able to get back to you in a few minutes."

"Acknowledged," Natalie replied. The Bridge crew waited patiently for Anna to complete her scans. Since Astrometrics’ sensor range was more efficient than the one on the Bridge, it took a bit longer for the sensor to feed in all the data and format it. Luckily, Anna was a whiz so she was able to filter out the unimportant information that the computer had gathered. After filtering it out, she was able to locate the crew with one hundred percent accuracy.

"Astrometrics to Bridge," she said, tapping her commbadge. "Found them". Through the connection she could hear applause on the bridge. "I’m sending the coordinates to Ops."

"Got them, Captain," Noah said to Natalie. She nodded. "Now what?". Natalie sighed. She wasn’t sure what step two would be. They had found the planet and the crew, but now that they found them Natalie wasn’t sure how were they going to get them back. A direct approach was futile, so they were going to have to come up with something a little more subtle and undetectable.

She turned to Naomi.

"Any ideas?" she asked. Naomi shook her head.

"Not a clue," Naomi replied. "I suggest we get everybody together, including the Doctor, to come up with our master plan."

"Plans! Ha! When did plans ever do any good?" she asked sarcastically. Naomi raised her eyebrow. "I’m kidding, geez, no need to take everything I say so literally." Naomi smiled and tapped her commbadge.

"Bridge to Astrometrics," she said. "Anna, could you report the bridge, please. Thanks, Wildman out." She called the Doctor next. They all reconvened in the Briefing Room minutes later.

=/\=

The "senior staff" of Voyager had spent hours debating and deliberating ideas about how to rescue the real crew of Voyager. So far, they had had no such luck. Ideas were few and far between. Whenever one sounded like it would be plausible, someone would eventually detect a whole in the plot and it would sink like the Titanic. They started going through some of the previous missions of Voyager’s to see if they could find a similar one and use that plan, but so far they had found nothing similar enough. After awhile, the "senior staff" started looking through the mission logs of such ships at the USS Enterprise, and other famous ships they had learned about in history class.

Nothing was working and the "senior staff" was becoming disheartened with the attempt at a rescue mission.

"Nothing is working!" Blake cried, frustrated. "We have looked through every single record from the last twenty years and there isn’t anything."

Emily leaned her head back. "Maybe it would be best if we just waited for them to come to us. Most likely the crew is already forming their own rescue attempt. We could just be here to wait for them to appear. When they do, we can transport them out." Emily shrugged and turned off the console that she had been using which was littered with information about the Voyager’s missions.

"Through eighteen different levels of shielding?" Andy asked. His eyes were wide and anxious. "All with different harmonic rotations? It’s unlikely at best." Natalie sighed.

"We all know the tactical superiority of the Mandorians, Andy," Natalie replied.

"Damn it!" Naomi shouted, furiously slamming her hand down on the conference table. She turned around and kicked the wall with her foot as hard as she could. She leaned against the windowsill, looking out into space, seething. Her mother had done everything she ever could to keep Naomi safe and rescue her every time Naomi was in trouble. Now that her mother was in trouble, Naomi didn’t know how to save her. She felt helpless and vulnerable.

Seth walked over to his older sister and gently put his hand on Naomi’s shoulder. From the reflection on the window, Seth could see tears streaming down her face.

"It’s ok, Naomi," Seth whispered soothingly. "We’ll find her." Chin quivering, Naomi nodded in agreement.

"I know," she replied. She exhaled. "I know."

=/\=

Transport to: Table of Contents | Chapter Six