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After the end of the Dominion War, things are strange.
Maybe it’s the memories of shapeshifters that have everyone jumping at shadows. Maybe it’s the way that grief and violence have leached into everyday life, poison in the well. Maybe it’s the fact that the dead now walk the streets.
They call it the miracle ship. Returned from the farthest depths of space seven years after its supposed destruction. The Federation touts it as a piece of propaganda - they’re in desperate need of it, after all - but nevertheless there are whispers. From the streets of Earth, of Kronos, of Bajor, all the way up to the highest offices of Starfleet itself, there are whispers. To survive in the Delta Quadrant meant they had to adapt, to change, to evolve until they’d become something alien, something feral. Like a dog that’s remembered what it’s like to be a wolf. The crew of the USS Voyager came back wrong.
It would be a waste of a unique set of expertise, the Admirals say, not to put Voyager’s crew to work in the way that they did. The Borg are a persistent problem, poaching at the edges of Federation space, and Voyager knows how to deal with them. But the truth is that Starfleet’s more scared of the ones who hunt the hunters than the hunters themselves. The crew is intelligent and fiercely loyal and absolutely terrifying. It’s not the remnant pieces of Borg technology, implants and nanoprobes, that float through their bodies. It’s not the infusions of alien DNA that have given them strange, unsettling features. It’s what’s in their eyes. They may have once been human, Vulcan, Klingon, but now there’s something distinctly alien in their gaze. Sharp and predatory. Far more akin to each other than to anyone outside.
What do you do with something like that? Voyager is a lion in a circus, unpredictable, out of its element, hungry. So, like any good lion tamer, Starfleet has to keep them busy. Allow them to apply those killer instincts on an acceptable target, lest they turn them on the sweet, cotton-candy fed masses of the Federation.
At the edges of Federation space, the lion hunts. Sleek and fast and brutally capable. Its jaws slather as it stalks its prey. Hungry, starving. After all, it had been so long since the Borg dared venture close to Federation space. Long enough that the Admirals had started to get antsy, worried that their lion would start to get bored.
Captain Kathryn Janeway leans back in her chair on the Bridge, gazing out at the stars. The crew works with a keen efficiency around her, an intricate dance that they’ve practiced a thousand times over, to which only they know the steps. Her eyes are shark-like, cold and pale, but they spark with affection when she turns them on her first officer. It feels good to have him at her side, it feels right. Back in the Delta Quadrant he was often her conscience, but he hasn’t felt the need to play that role as much in the Federation. It’s probably best not to think too hard about why.
Chakotay smiles and takes her hand in his own, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. A conquering queen and her loyal knight-consort. Devoted to her, body and soul. The man who stood by her side when no one else would, through her darkest hours, when all hope was lost. Who would tear apart time and space, bring the galaxy to its knees, all for her. Oh, how she loves that, how she loves him. Rulers of their strange, beautiful little kingdom. It’s everything she never knew she wanted.
She knows Tuvok’s watching her and Chakotay with a raised eyebrow and she can practically hear him telling them to save it for after their shift. He’s certainly thinking it. Glancing back at Tuvok, Janeway shoots him a grin. In many ways, he’s as much her other half as Chakotay is. Old friends, partners-in-crime. There’s always been something they recognize within each other. He meters her recklessness, much like Chakotay does, but unlike Chakotay he understands the impulse for immolation. To thrill in teetering on the edge of darkness, to hide your self-destructive tendencies underneath a cloak of righteousness.
Glancing over her left shoulder, she catches sight of Harry at ops and a different kind of affection rises in her chest. Maternal, proud, possessive. The physical effects of the Delta Quadrant are clearest on him. Pale scar tissue draws fractal patterns up the sides of his neck, along the edges of his face, a gift from Species 8472. Red spots, almost Trill-like, dapple the skin of his temples underneath silver implants. He’s been marked, reborn. Child of the Delta Quadrant, child of Voyager. The uncertain boy has become a ruthless young man, burning with ingenuity and a willingness to die for his crew. A warrior for the cause. It reminds Janeway of old Earth stories, of fae queens who spirit human children away from their parents, turn them into something other, something made to serve their own ends.
Tom sits at the helm, just as calm and focused as the rest of them. He’s at his most comfortable here, working as part of the pack. After all, that’s all he’s ever really wanted, to be accepted and included. Voyager gives him that and he rarely questions anything.
Tom’s own implants, a mirror image to Harry’s, flicker with blue light as he turns his head from side to side. They’re a triple set, the third pair worn by B’Elanna down in Engineering. Harry and B’Elanna came up with the idea themselves, a way to make their jobs more efficient, more effective. Their brains are keyed directly into Voyager’s systems, and by proxy into each other, as much a part of its operating as the bio-neural circuitry. Tom flies the ship, B’Elanna makes it go, and Harry acts as the nexus linking everything together. Janeway wonders what it feels like when the three of them fall into bed together. Whether they can feel each other through the ship, whether the ship can feel them. Implants casting light on bare skin in a darkened bedroom. A bacchanalia of machine and flesh.
The quiet hum of Voyager’s warp core permeates the air. Ever present, a sound that Janeway knows as well as the beating of her own heart. It makes her think of B’Elanna, down in Engineering. She, much like Tom, is someone who before Voyager was only looking for a home. And, much like with Harry, Janeway feels a certain sense of pride at having shaped her into the person she’s become. A master blacksmith honing raw steel into a something keen and refined and viciously effective.
There’s a report from Seven at her right hand. Though the language is technical there’s a certain ruthlessness to it. Driven by more than just the thrill of the hunt, driven by the need for revenge. It’s funny, how everyone on the crew is a traitor in their own way. Like it’s a requirement for entry. To serve on Voyager means betraying what you were before. Turning your loyalties inwards until you aren’t Starfleet or Maquis or even Borg, you’re simply Voyager. And once Voyager has its teeth in you, that’s all you’ll ever be.
Janeway smiles and lets out a happy sigh. Content with her family, her pack, her place at their head. In her heart of hearts, she can’t help but miss the Delta Quadrant, but right here, right now, it’s almost like nothing has changed.