SYMBOLS

CHAPTER 27

From inside the shuttle bay, they had felt the tremors and buffetings Voyager had endured. They knew the ship was being fired upon by an armada of bronze ships. Finally, on the outside, they could see the damage. There were large smoldering holes in Decks Six, Seven and Eight. Various gases were being vented from other damaged sections and several large dark patches had been burnt into the hull. Microfractures were strewn across various sections and a couple of escape pods were alight.

Janeway looked at her beloved Voyager. It was damaged but intact, so she turned her eyes away from the scene to concentrate on the next phase of their mission.

"You have a maximum of 180 seconds to enter the planet's atmosphere and transport to the surface," Carlson said to the away team. Then he turned toward Ensign Hamilton. "This will leave us no more than forty seconds to tractor the Delta Flyer and get the hell out of here!"

The Delta Flyer raced toward the planet at maximum impulse. Not far away were the Anawin ships that had been set adrift. The communication signal began to break up from the dampening fields encasing the nearby space station.

"We're about to move out of communication range," Janeway said.

"Our thoughts go with you, Captain. Here's hoping your quest is both safe and successful," Carlson said.

"Till we return, Lieutenant," Janeway farewelled the crewman confidently.

"See you in twenty hours." Carlson's voice crackled and static echoed over the top of his words, until the signal was replaced by white noise.

"We're on our own now," Chakotay voiced the realization.

Janeway stared at the space station not far away. In the center of the station was a large bubble shaped protrusion - Zeron's observation window. She knew the High Councilor would most likely be standing somewhere behind that window, staring at the Delta Flyer, watching them with the same intense expression she'd witnessed when Paris rescued Tayna and Kylani from the disposal unit.

Zeron had called the space station his observatory, but Janeway had come to see it in a more worrisome light. The Anawin space station was much more a tracking device than a simple observation deck.

The Flyer sped over the top of one of the black docking pylons. She looked at Chakotay in his guard uniform, and at B'Elanna, who had swept her purple hood down onto her shoulders so she didn't have to continually adjust it to be able to see. If only Zeron had been reasonable, then none of this would have been necessary.

In devising the away mission strategy, she'd thought long and hard about how they might avoid detection and transport safely to the surface. Zeron's technology allowed him to scour the Anawin City. If they stood out in any way, he would spot them. Their arrival on the planet had to be subtle and their transport from the Flyer had to go undetected, or else Zeron would simply plot their course and dispatch a pack of guards to take them hostage.

Janeway looked at the figure on the numeric countdown. Voyager would be making its move now, weaving steadily back into the station's sensor range and within closer proximity of another building plasma emission. The moment Zeron registered Voyager's presence, it would serve as a brief distraction, providing just a few seconds for them to transport to the surface. It was their window of opportunity. The best chance for them to beam onto the planet undetected, and it had to be timed perfectly.

Lieutenant Carlson would then tractor the empty Flyer back.

Janeway knew the moment Voyager locked a tractor beam onto the shuttle that Zeron would realize the individuals on board had disappeared and where they'd most likely be found. But by then, she hoped, they would have blended in among the Anawin populace.

"17, 16, 15..." Chakotay interrupted his own countdown of the remaining seconds. "I'm reading an atmospheric layer of turbulence up ahead."

"Are we within transporter range of the surface yet?" Harry's voice echoed through the cockpit.

"Not yet," Torres replied.

The Flyer shook ferociously as it skimmed over the planet's upper thermosphere.

"9, 8..." Chakotay stopped counting at five.

Janeway was aware of the depleting time frame.

"Almost there. Initiating transport." Torres' voice interrupted the captain's mental countdown of the last four seconds. Everything in the Delta Flyer's interior was fading - her chair, the console, the walls. Janeway was relieved to find herself standing alongside the other five shuttle occupants in a secluded alley of the Anawin City on the count of zero.